Hurricane Electric is a global

Internet service provider An Internet service provider (ISP) is an organization that provides services for accessing, using, or participating in the Internet. ISPs can be organized in various forms, such as commercial, community-owned, non-profit, or otherwise private ...

offering internet transit, tools, and network applications, as well as

data center A data center (American English) or data centre (British English)See spelling differences. is a building, a dedicated space within a building, or a group of buildings used to house computer systems and associated components, such as telecommunic ...

colocation and hosting services at 2 locations in

Fremont, California Fremont is a city in Alameda County, California, United States. Located in the East Bay region of the San Francisco Bay Area, Bay Area, Fremont has a population of 230,504 as of 2020, making it the fourth List of cities and towns in the San Fra ...

, where the company is based. According to its own data, Hurricane Electric is the largest global IP network as measured by network adjacencies in both IPv4 and IPv6. It is also the largest global IP network as measured by IPv6 prefixes announced, and the fifth-largest global IP network as measured by IPv4 prefixes announced, according to its own data.

IPv6

Hurricane Electric operates the largest

Internet Protocol version 4 Internet Protocol version 4 (IPv4) is the fourth version of the Internet Protocol (IP). It is one of the core protocols of standards-based internetworking methods in the Internet and other packet-switched networks. IPv4 was the first version de ...

(IPv4) and

Internet Protocol version 6 Internet Protocol version 6 (IPv6) is the most recent version of the Internet Protocol (IP), the communications protocol that provides an identification and location system for computers on networks and routes traffic across the Internet. IPv ...

(IPv6) transit networks globally, as measured by the count of ''

peering In computer networking, peering is a voluntary interconnection of administratively separate Internet networks for the purpose of exchanging traffic between the "down-stream" users of each network. Peering is settlement-free, also known as "bill-and ...

'' interconnections to other networks. The majority of these adjacencies are native IPv6 BGP sessions. Hurricane Electric offers an IPv6 tunnel broker service, providing free connectivity to the IPv6 Internet via

6in4 6in4 is an IPv6 transition mechanism for migrating from Internet Protocol version 4 (IPv4) to IPv6. It is a tunneling protocol that encapsulates IPv6 packets on specially configured IPv4 links according to the specifications of . The IP protocol n ...

IPv6 transition mechanism An IPv6 transition mechanism is a technology that facilitates the transitioning of the Internet from the Internet Protocol version 4 (IPv4) infrastructure in use since 1983 to the successor addressing and routing system of Internet Protocol Vers ...

s. The company provides an online IPv6 certification program to further education and compliance in IPv6 technology. As of June 21, 2020, the company reports 76,110 provisioned tunnels spanning 196 countries via the IPv6 tunnel broker. 17,707 individuals in 165 countries have reached the highest level of the IPv6 certification.

Peering

Within its global network, Hurricane Electric is connected to more than 290 major exchange points and exchanges IP traffic directly with more than 10,500 different networks. Hurricane Electric currently has 20+ Terabits per second active public peering capacity and 200+ Terabits per second active private peering capacity. The

European Internet Exchange Association The European Internet Exchange Association, or Euro-IX, is an association of European Internet exchange points. It is a community-driven association serving European Internet exchange points and Internet service providers and the general IP commu ...

(Euro-IX) ranks Hurricane Electric first in the world for the number of connections to Internet exchange points, with presence at more than 155 of Euro-IX member IXPs.

Peering dispute

There is a long-running dispute between the provider

Cogent Communications Cogent Communications is a multinational internet service provider based in the United States. Cogent's primary services consist of Internet access and data transport, offered on a fiber optic, IP data-only network, along with colocation in data ...

and Hurricane Electric. Cogent has been refusing to peer settlement-free with Hurricane Electric since 2009.

References

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External links

Hurricane Electric IPv6 tunnel broker service
Companies based in Fremont, California Data centers Internet service providers of the United States Internet service providers IPv6 Technology companies based in the San Francisco Bay Area American companies established in 1994 Technology companies established in 1994