Telstra kicks off next stage of IPv6 shift for mobile network

Telstra will today begin the transition to IPv6 Single-Stack across its mobile network.

The transition will begin in South Australia, with mobile devices connecting to the Telstra.wap APN receiving only an IPv6 address; the telco began its roll out of IPv6 for its mobile network in August 2016 with dual-stack support, meaning an IPv6-capable device would also receive an IPv4 address.

“A  smartphone or tablet that uses telstra.wap as the APN and is configured for dual stack will only be allocated an IPv6 address,” a Telstra spokesperson said.

(Telstra in 2011 .)

The Telstra.internet APN, which is employed by a number of mobile broadband dongles and modems, will remain dual-stack.

Those devices that are manually or by default configured for dual-stack support will be affected by the transition, which should be transparent to end users, according to Telstra. The telco will employ DNS64/NAT64 for access to IPv4-only websites.

“Further deployments in other states are planned to take place before the end of February,” the spokesperson told Computerworld.

“The Telstra network will continue to support both IPv4 and IPv6 for the foreseeable future,” the spokesperson said.

APNIC in 2011 exhausted its pool of IPv4 addresses.