How does it work?

The NZ IPv6 Internet Exchange is an experimental neutral distributed exchange located on CityLink's switches in Auckland and Wellington. APE and WIX IPv4 participants who want to experiment with IPv6 can arrange a peering session with either of the IPv6 exchanges (APE6 and WIX6) in those locations.

In addition, there are two routers (tunnelbroker.ape and tunnelbroker.wix) attached to the APE and WIX which listen to routes advertised by their local route server and each other. The net result of this is that routes advertised to the APE IPv6 route server get propagated to the WIX IPv6 route server and vice versa. CityLink are continuing to make a 1M network link between the two exchanges available for experimental purposes. This link and some of the hardware used were originally funded by InternetNZ .

It's important to note that just as in the IPv4 exchanges CityLink does not provide international or national transit (apart from the link between the two parts of the distributed exchange) nor do we provide IPv6 address space for your networks. At this stage we aren't aware of any New Zealand ISPs who are offering native IPv6 transit. We suggest that you arrange to connect to the IPv6 backbone via a tunnel service such as those provided by Freenet6, Hurricane Electric or AARNet IPv6 Migration Broker. As part of the process of registration you can request an IPv6 /48 prefix and you can then advertise that block to one of the V6IX route servers.