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Progress is being made on introduction of IPv6 into the Internet but this progress has not yet reached most end users. So in many cases, the IPv6-over-IPv4 tunneling technique is used to connect end users to the IPv6 Internet. The method called 6to4 is one of tunneling techniques, and it is relatively easy for end users to set up the IPv6-over-IPv4 tunnel and to connect to the IPv6 Internet by using 6to4.
A 6to4 relay router enables users employing the automatic tunneling mechanism 6to4 to connect to the IPv6 Internet. An "open" 6to4 relay router is made publicly available, in a sense that users who have a global IPv4 address can use this relay router to connect to the IPv6 Internet.
There are currently dozen or so open 6to4 relay routers worldwide. However, none of these had been installed in Japan so in order to connect to the IPv6 Internet, a Japanese user had to use an overseas router. Particularly, even if connecting to an IPv6 server in Japan, the connection had to be routed overseas and had problems with poor performance. Therefore, we decided to evaluate 6to4 technology and set ourselves the goal of improving 6to4 operation within Japan. To accomplish this goal we installed an open 6to4 relay router within Japan in March 2002, with the cooperation of the WIDE project and started this experiment.
In June 2003, we further installed the second open 6to4 relay router at KDDI Labs. USA in Palo Alto, USA with the cooperation of the WIDE project. KDDI Labs is the first institution to provide this IPv4-IPv6 connectivity both in Japan and the U.S. Future plans include research and assessment of the decentralization of the 6to4 relay routers and the optimization of routing control between the two countries. See network configuration.
