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Comcast has been conducting IPv6 technical trials in our production network for more than a year, and we've been working diligently on IPv6 deployment for over 6 years. After so many years of challenging preparatory work, significant technology investment, internal skills development, and close collaboration with our technology partners, I am incredibly pleased to announce that we've achieved another critical milestone in our transition to IPv6 — we have started the pilot market deployment of IPv6 to customers in selected markets! We're now the first large ISP in North America to start deploying IPv6. This is a significant milestone not just inside our own company but also in the industry, particularly given the chicken and egg relationship between the availability of content and software that supports IPv6 and the deployment of IPv6 to end users.

This first phase will support certain types of directly connected CPE, where a single computer is connected directly to a cable modem. Subsequent phases in 2011 and 2012 will support home gateway devices and variable length prefixes. Critically, our approach is "native dual stack" which means customers will get both IPv4 and IPv6 addresses. Some other ISPs that are less prepared may be using tunneling or large scale NAT in the network. Those approaches are likely to result in some applications (such as some real-time applications) breaking or seeming slow. Native dual stack, the approach we are using, avoids breaking or slowing applications and maintains a better and faster broadband Internet experience. Our customers buy Xfinity Internet service in large part for our great speeds, and they can rest assured that they won't have to slow down as the world transitions to IPv6, as we've "just said no to NAT" in this phase of our IPv6 transition.

For all the key technical details, check out this complementary blog post from John Brzozowski.

What began as a 24-hour test a year ago will become business as usual on Wednesday as a range of big-name Internet companies permanently switch on the next-generation IPv6 networking technology. And now there's no turning back. "IPv6 is being enabled and kept on by more than 1,500 Web sites and ISPs in 22 countries," said Arbor Networks, a company that monitors global Internet traffic closely.

Momentum surrounding IPv6 is picking up, and IETF participants should be ready for it to snowball soon, according to an Internet Society panel held in Anaheim, California, during the IETF meeting.