Right before I went on vacation I posted some initial thoughts about the relevance of IPv6 to countries wanting to bring new users to the internet and expand existing internet based economic markets.
While I still don’t see enough governmental support for the massive amount of effort that is needed to make this shift it is interesting to see the rising level of concern and activity in this area.
Here is a round up of some of the conversations going on at the moment on this topic.
First of all ChinaTechNews.com is carrying a story about the rapidly deceasing pool of IPv4 address space available to Chinese users. China has hundreds of millions of individuals and a commensurate number of businesses who are yet to come online.
As a basic resource for the Internet, the IPv4 addresses are limited and 80% of the final allocation IP addresses have been used. By the current allocation speed, China’s IPv4 address resource can only meet the demand of 830 more days. If there is no available new resource by then, new netizens will not be able to gain normal access to the Internet and the business expansion of network operators will be impossible.
Cyndy Aleo-Carreira over at thestandard.com has picked up on a blog post from ICANN that discusses which region of the world is adopting IPv6 most rapidly, it turns out that it is Africa that is in the lead here, supporting my hypothesis that emerging markets will drive much of the early adoption and need until some of the more developed economies begin to recognize the cost of missed market access;
The growth of IPv6 in Africa is expected since it is a continent that’s showing rapid growth in terms of online connectivity. With the estimated date for exhaustion of IPv4 addressing in 2010, it makes sense to that a burgeoning Internet community would adopt the new protocol. It should be noted though, that many older pieces of equipment can’t address the IPv6 standards, and is still dependent on using the older protocol. IPv4 will probably be very much alive to address those systems.
In New Zealand it is InternetNZ who appear to be leading the charge, organizing public workshops in Wellington, Christchurch and Auckland to support the effort there.
ComputerWorld NZ is carrying a story that quotes INZ’s Keith Davidson;
InternetNZ has coordinated two workshops, in Christchurch and Auckland, in the past few weeks, to follow one held in Wellington, on the technical aspects of upgrading to IPv6. The Christchurch workshop followed a meeting there of the New Zealand Asia Pacific Network Information Centre (APNIC).
New Zealand now has more than 70 technical staff with the necessary skills for the transition, Davidson says. The NZ Network Operations Group (NZNOG) is also showing increased commitment to the urgency of the change, he says. The next phase of the task is to convince the CIOs and CTOs of local organisations of the need to push on with the task.
“Bearing in mind our small size and the number of skilled people available, there is a great opportunity for New Zealand to assert some leadership in this regard,” Davidson says.
Finally, the Australian IPv6 summit is coming up in Canberra on November 17th-19th, if you want to get involved then it appears you can sign up at the page linked here.
From the summit’s home page;
Sphere: Related ContentThis Summit will look at recent IPv6 transitions – and how users, government, vendors and service providers can work together on planning, security and implementation strategies.
Internet Protocol Version 6 offers enhanced mobility, simpler management, built-in security and almost unlimited Internet addresses for next-generation devices. The IPv6 Summit offers two days of international and Australian experts, plus an optional one-day IPv6 Deployment Workshop to provide a hands-on guide to implementation.