Preparing for the deployment of IPv6 addressing protocol in the region


Friday, 19 June, 2009


Preparing for the deployment of IPv6 addressing protocol in the region

Rapid expansion of the internet to accommodate new users and new applications, such as IPTV and mobile broadband, is rapidly depleting the reserves of unallocated IPv4 addresses.

However, to address this, the internet industry is already preparing for wider deployment of the new IP version 6 (IPv6) addressing protocol. Respondents to a recent survey by the Asia Pacific Network Information Centre (APNIC) indicated that 37% already have or can immediately roll out IPv6 on their networks.

APNIC calls on corporates, governments and end users to also begin preparing for a migration to IPv6 in order to avoid potential connectivity problems in the future and to take advantage of the innovative point-to-point internet applications which are expected to become possible with the larger address space.

In the case of IPv4, the number of data bits used to represent the address limits the number of addressable devices. While IPv6 is similarly limited, using a larger number of addressing bits increases the number of addresses by orders of magnitude.

Miwa Fujii, IPv6 Program Manager for APNIC, explained APNIC believes the deployment of IPv6 is the best outcome for the future of the internet. "Without it the internet will be unable to expand and innovate and will become increasingly complex and costly to manage.

"There is an increasing trend for individual users to maintain multiple connections to the internet. Combined with wider adoption in developing economies, this is accelerating demand for IP addresses.

"It is common today for people to connect to the internet via their desktop, via a wireless LAN, while also using mobile broadband on their mobile phone or accessing new application services such as real-time location aware services that deliver traffic updates for their GPS navigation device for example.

"This explosion in demand for mobile connectivity represents a new use of internet resources. People are connecting in multiple ways, picking up a second or even a third simultaneous connection to the internet - each needing a globally unique identifier," said Fujii.

As with any other infrastructure service like transportation, water or electricity, the internet has certain critical resources without which it cannot operate. In the case of the internet, these are numerical resources (such as IP addresses) and domain names.Organisations in the Asia–Pacific region manage these resources so that everyone has fair access to them.

As the final exhaustion of IPv4 addresses nears, Regional Internet Registries such as APNIC are responsible for ensuring availability and responsible management of numeric resources.

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