Renater3 is a national backbone with at least one POP in every French region. To connect to this POP, the sites use some access network (regional or metropolitan network). At the beginning of Renater3, none of these access networks were IPv6 enabled, meaning that the connection between the Renater3 POPs and the sites was done using tunnels or dedicated links (ATM PVCs, serial links, etc). As the core backbone is a Cisco GSR infrastructure, the choice was made not to set up tunnels on the core routers. Some dedicated equipment was deployed to concentrate the tunnels in the regions. Some of these routers are the ones used for the IPv6 pilot.

Eighteen months after the deployment of Renater3, there are 13 regional or metropolitan networks providing IPv6 connectivity to their customers, and 19 have received a prefix, so new networks should be connected soon. These networks used many different approaches for this IPv6 deployment: 6PE, VLANs, fully dual-stack, PVC ATM, tunnels, etc, and all these deployments are done in straight collaboration with Renater. It is clear that the deployment made in the core network is a real motivation for the other networks at the edges to follow.