The M6Bone is an IPv6 multicast test network. It started in 2001 with the support of RENATER, the G6 and the Aristote Association. This network is used for testing network equipments, software, or any implementation related to IPv6 multicast technology. At the beginning of the 6NET project, few sites were connected and almost no technology was available. End-sites were using PC based routers connected all together with IPv6 multicast tunnels. The strong involvement of 6NET partners in the M6Bone network made it possible at the very beginning to deploy a mesh of multicast tunnels accross Europe and start stressing the lack of IPv6 multicast in the core networks.

The strong collaboration with CISCO engineers made it possible to have the IPv6 multicast related protocols implemented in test router images very little time after. After some tests made by the different partners, images could be validated and deployed in the 6NET backbone. This made it possible to interconnect natively most of the different partners in Europe, while most of the links toward networks in the other continents remained tunnels. Now IPv6 multicast protocols are implemented in many vendor’s equipments, and GEANT and some european NRENs are deploying IPv6 multicast service in their network.

Not only 6NET helped in the implementation and the deployment of the protocols, but there was also a strong involvement of the partners in the IETF standardization process. as an example, the RFC 3956 "Embedding the Rendezvous Point (RP) Address in an IPv6 Multicast Address" solves the IPv6 multicast interdomain issue. And other important standardization work has been done on other related topics.