Hitachi Expands Its IPv6 Support for Its Complete Product Line Of GR2000 Gigabit Routers - The Fastest Native IPv6 Router Support Available.

Business Editors

TOKYO--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Nov. 29, 2000

The Information Systems & Computer Group of Hitachi, Ltd. (NYSE:HIT) today announced that its GR2000 Gigabit Router family will support IPv6 (Internet Protocol Version6). GR2000 IPv6 support will be available in February, 2001. In this enhancement, the GR2000 supports native IPv6 over a 2.4Gbit/s (OC-48c) line interface, which is the fastest interface available on any IPv6 router product.

The number of systems connected to the Internet has doubled in each recent year as the popularity of the Internet explodes. This rapid growth is depleting the address space of the current Internet Protocol (IPv4), which will soon run out of available addresses to assign to new systems. It is projected that the current IP address pool will run dry shortly after 2001. In addition, IPv4 is not designed to solve many of the problems occurring in the today's networks. For example, IPv4 does not have auto-configuration, security, or real-time stream handling functions, and IPv4 contains rarely used fields in its header, which is always checked at each router, adding unnecessary overhead. To solve these and other problems, the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) has standardized the next generation Internet Protocol (IPv6). IPv6 expands the IP address space from 32 to 128 bits. IPv6 is able to provide sufficient address space for next-generation Internet and intranets, and is expected to accommodate connectivity for consumer and home electronics devices as well.

Hitachi began development of IPv6 products in the early day of its standardization, and has been actively involved in the IPv6 community. Hitachi developed the first IPv6 router with a network address translation function in June, 1997, and real-time IPv4-IPv6 application translation in August, 1998. Some models of the GR2000 Gigabit Router family supported limited IPv6 functionality in April, 2000. Customers such as carriers, ISPs and research organizations worldwide have already been testing functions and interoperability of GR2000 IPv6 and have learned much practical operation and administration know-how through their experience. The GR2000 won the grand prize of Best of the Show Awards in Networld + Interop 2000 Tokyo based on its IPv6 feature.

With this enhancement, IPv6 is now supported across the entire GR2000 product line and a broader range of line interfaces, in addition to providing more feature rich IPv6 functionality. The GR2000 supports basic IPv6 protocol suites including RIPng and BGP4+. The GR2000 supports native IPv6 over OC-48c (2.4Gbit/s), which is the fastest interface available for any IPv6 router product, OC-3c/OC-12c ATM/POS (Packet over SONET), Gigabit Ethernet LANs, as well as other interfaces. The GR2000 further provides convenient operation and administration tools such as IPv6 over IPv4 tunneling, IPv4 over IPv6 tunneling, IPv6 MIB (Management Information Base), browser-based configuration, ping6, traceroute6, etc., for co-existence of IPv6 and IPv4, and smooth network transition from IPv4 to IPv6.

About Hitachi

Hitachi, Ltd., headquartered in Tokyo, Japan, is one of the world's leading global electronics companies, with fiscal 1999 (ended March 31, 2000) consolidated sales of 8,001 billion yen ($75.5 billion(a)). The company manufactures and markets a wide range of products, including computers, semiconductors, consumer products and power and industrial equipment. For more information on Hitachi, Ltd., please visit Hitachi's Web site at http://www.hitachi.co.jp.

(a) At an exchange rate of 106 yen to the dollar.