Cisco’s principal engineer Darren Dukes recently announced that IPv6 Segment Routing Header was published as RFC 8754. For a person unaccustomed with the Internet’s backend, that might have no meaning, but it is very exciting news for everyone working on Segment Routing, including NOIA Network. Essentially, this officially consolidates the Segment Routing and IPv6 and enables their coherent deployment, but let us explain.

Because of its decentralized nature, the Internet’s development is a mutual effort. When a novel technology is introduced, it must be compatible with hardware and software produced by thousands of different makers. Having a standardization process in place allows the Internet to function in a harmonious and well-coordinated manner, hereby reducing system errors.

Establishing a standard is a lengthy process, involving Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) volunteers, including network engineers and researchers. It starts with a draft, which working groups from IETF or other organizations then submit to the repository. Submission of a draft marks the birth of an initial idea, kick-starting the revision process that paves the way for establishing a standard.

Few drafts make the full progression into standards, which are reserved for well-established fundamental technologies, such as the Internet Protocol Suite. There is, however, a transitional status — Request for Comments (RFC), which is considered a proposed standard by IETF.

RFC documents are no less important than fully-fledged standards. Many RFCs are being applied Internet-wide and adopted by developers. Most importantly, they make their way to the end-user.

Before we started working on Segment Routing, we realized how outdated the Internet is and how deeply rooted some of its problems are. Tackling them required a fundamental solution, but we saw how Segment Routing and IPv6 can be utilized to build the technology necessary to solve these problems. That was one and a half years ago.

We then made the leap of faith decision and invested our time and resources in utilizing entirely new and not widely accepted technology. Now, it seems that Segment Routing is on its way from research departments to real-world users. We continue contributing to its deployment and celebrate this step with such industry-leading companies as Cisco.

For nearly two years, we have been developing a better Internet that reduces costs, provides encryption by default, and improves speed — all in a few clicks. In a perfectly timed fashion, just when Segment Routing is becoming official, NOIA Network is about to offer a mainstream, market-ready solution, which incorporates the public Internet. Making this pivot at the right time allowed us to be among the first companies to do that.

Pushing the frontiers of the Internet’s innovation is in our essence, and we are looking forward to pioneering this revolutionary field together with our community and the Internet at large.