Sydney, AUSTRALIA – 5 August 2008 – AARNet, Australia’s National Research and Education Network (NREN) has allowed Australian and ASEAN participants from 12 organisations to collaborate by running the first ever IPv6 Multicast on its network at the CanalAVIST ICT Forum.

Multicast is commonly used for broadcasting content across the Internet where a single computer provides an audio, video or data feed to thousands of participants at the same time. From 31 July to 1 August 2008, the ICT Forum linked participants from institutions in Thailand, Hong Kong, Japan, Singapore and Australia through a series of talks streamed from various sites on TEIN2 (Trans-Eurasia Information Network) and across the AARNet network to Australia. This IPv6 Multicast was made possible through AARNet’s recent upgrade of its IP backbone.

Chris Hancock, CEO of AARNet said, “AARNet supports the deployment of IPv6 as part of our roadmap to encourage collaboration and experimentation between academic and research institutions. We have been running IPv6 as a native protocol since building AARNet3 in 2004. The successful demonstration of our first IPv6 Multicast for the CanalAVIST ICT Forum demonstrates the robustness of AARNet’s network.”

“Through our continued investment in an international network, not only has AARNet strengthened the relationship between Australian and Asia Pacific countries, it has also demonstrated Australia’s commitment towards fostering innovation in the region.”

Steve Maddocks, Director of Operations at AARNet said, “This event demonstrates the first productive use of the IPv6 protocol together with Multicast technology. Unlike video conferencing which consumes greater bandwidth by sending multiple data packets to every participant in a conference, a Multicast resembles a TV broadcast where a single signal is streamed to every participant. This consumes significantly less bandwidth and allows countries which have bandwidth constraints to participate in a video event with less technical constraints.”

The CanalAVIST ICT Forum Multicast on IPv6 consumed 34 Mbits per seconds of bandwidth for 12 organisations across Asia Pacific. By comparison, a forum using unicast technology to 12 organisations could potentially consume 300 Mbits per second of bandwidth or more.

The CanalAVIST ICT Forum discussed topics such as ICT Research in NICTA, Exploring IP Network Architecture over Broadcast Media and Predicting Network Availability Using User Context. Institutions participating at the event included the Asian Institute of Technology, Keio University, the National ICT Australia (NICTA), the National University of Singapore and Tsinghua University.

AARNet has dedicated points of presence between Australia, Singapore and the TEIN2 network. TEIN2 is the first large-scale research and education network in Asia-Pacific. It links the national networks in China, Indonesia, Japan, Korea, Malaysia, the Philippines, Singapore, Thailand, Vietnam and Australia at speeds of up to 1Gbps and provides direct connectivity to Europe’s GÉANT2 network.

- ENDS -

For further information, please contact:

Gabriel Wong Max Australia (02) 9954 3492 gabriel.wong@maxaustralia.com.au

About AARNet AARNet Pty Ltd (APL) is the company that operates Australia's Academic and Research Network (AARNet). It is a not-for-profit company limited by shares. The shareholders are 37 Australian universities and the CSIRO. AARNet provides high-capacity leading edge Internet services for the tertiary education and research sector communities and their research partners. AARNet serves more than one million end users who access the network through local area networks at member institutions. For further information, please visit: www.aarnet.edu.au.