KANSAS CITY, MO. - February 4th, 2005 - The OCCAID Project (http://www.occaid.org) is pleased to announce the appointment of KC NAP, LLC as the IPv6 exchange point in Kansas City. James Jun, OCCAID administrator, announced today the opening of OCCAID's new Point of Presence (POP) in Kansas City, Missouri. The node code for this POP is "MCI1" (Internet node codes often use airport identifiers).

The OCCAID Project runs the largest IPv6 educational Internet network in an ongoing production environment. The goal of the project is to provide a reliable environment for advanced network research and development by the public sector.

Internet Protocol Version 6 (IPv6) is the evolution of the Internet Protocol and is designed to replace the IP numbering system called Internet Protocol Version 4 (IPv4) in use today. IPv6 solves the issue of address exhaustion brought on in partly by the explosive growth of wireless IP devices and home networking. IPv6 also is expected to improve network routing and network auto-configuration.

OCCAID provides IPv6 transit services to North American ISPs and regional tunnel aggregation points, called Experimental Internet Transit Access Points (EINTAP)s. Individuals with interest in the anatomy of IPv6 routing can connect through one of the EINTAPs. The KC NAP now serves as one of these points.

MCI1 is being connected to KC NAP, LLC (http://www.kcnap.com) to provide native IPv6 transit via Ethernet VLANs to all ISPs who can connect to Bryant Building, fast becoming the area fiber hotel, in downtown Kansas City. "OCCAID is pleased to be the first and the largest IPv6 aggregation network in North America, which is now equipped to provide free IPv6 services to ISPs in the mid-continental US. There are no other networks like it in the history of IPv6 as far as I know," said Mr. Jun.

Jun went on "We hope that our new presence in Chicago to Dallas through Kansas City will help promote IPv6 much more in the region. Also, tunneling services are now available in both MCI1 (Kansas City) and Chicago (node code: ORD1)."

MCI1 is currently being connected to the rest of OCCAID network via Cogent Communications to provide native latency by routing west-east cross-country backbone traffic via actual fiber paths instead of blind tunnels. This backbone routing change will decrease the overall latency throughout the OCCAID v6 network in North America.

According to KC NAP President Graeme Gibson: "Our goal at the KC NAP is to continue to drive down latency, and to improve performance, by making Kansas City networks local. Suddenly having the vast numerical resources of the IPv6 address space is a great blessing to this community. To drive adoption, free IPv6 services will be made available to all NAP members of the area ISP community. Users needing IPv6 addresses should have their ISPs contact the NAP."

The OCCAID Project is also of great benefit to educational organizations, enterprise level business, VoIP carriers and the wireless community. According to Gibson "both wireless devices and IP based phones are burning through the traditional IPv4 address space at alarming rates. IPv4 was based on a 32 bit number; IPv6 uses 128 bit number, so the IP space available is massive."

Gibson and Jun also credited Shawn Mitchell the KC NAP Senior Network Engineer for his substantial contribution to making this service a reality. "The NAP partners and I are constantly impressed with the many technical talents of Mr. Mitchell. He is an innovator who makes things happen," said Gibson.

Gibson went on: "The old Internet was based on best efforts, and shared resources, the new Internet, typified by the advanced Quality of Service (QoS) and route prioritization of IPv6 is just what KC NAP, is all about. We intend to take advantage of "Internet Geography". "We are in the middle, just as this map shows. Kansas City needs to take advantage of that fact - and stop shipping all our traffic to Chicago just because they were in the game first."

About OCCAID

OCCAID is collaboration between research communities and ISPs, working to deploy next generation network technologies for enrichment of commercial and advanced internet applications. Through OCCAID, ISPs, carriers and researchers work together through partnership to develop and experience leading-edge internet technologies. For more information, please visit http://www.occaid.org.

About KC NAP

Based in Kansas City, KC NAP offers a suite of connectivity options including dedicated access to single, double or multiple routes, providing core differentiators in Internet performance and service for our customers. KC NAP is available with a wide array of built-in and optional value-added services and features that provide the customer with not just a connection to the Internet, but a full and robust dedicated Internet access solution. For more information, please visit http://www.kcnap.net.

Media Contact:
Chris Johnson
(617) 459-4051
pr [at] occaid.org