This is an extremely important debate for the continent. Thank you Ali for that.
Some of these issues have been debated thoroughly in several forums. It's very important we continue debating them until we see an exponential growth of IPv6 in the continent.
To answer a few questions, there is a clear justification on why it is necessary to migrate to IPv6. Among them:
- There are no enough IPv4 remaining for everyone. There are more devices, and people on earth than IPv4. Maximum IPv4 addresses are 4billion. Population of Earth is 7.3Billion. Maximum IPv6 address 3.4×1038
- Migration will not happen overnight since the recommended implementation is dual-stacking; that is, running IPv4 and IPv6 in parallel. We are not telling people to do away with IPv4, but to run the two protocols in parallel.
- To be a producer of information, you cannot use a shared IP, you need a dedicated IP. This has been a big challenge in the continent. We have stifled innovation by using shared IPs.
- There are many services now around the world which are IPv6 only website and services. If you are not on IPv6, you cannot get to these networks. Africa may get into what I can call "Information dark age" if we cannot acess some parts of the Internet.
- IPv6 is necessary for business growth. How? How will your business scale when IPv4 has run out?
What has AFRINIC done to bridge the gap?
1. Trainings. This year alone, AFRINIC is conducting free IPv6 trainings to over 23 countries across the continent. Kenya was among the beneficiaries. Check this link
http://www.afrinic.net/services/training
AFRINIC has an extensive training program provides free training to over 600 network engineers per year on Internet Number Resources Management (INRM) and IPv6 Planning and Deployment. Our training courses are always growing to support the technologies related to Internet resources, including DNSSEC & RPKI. AFRINIC's IPv6 course are IPv6 Forum (Gold) Certified and are fully hands-on, making use of extensive IPv6 testbed access which gives participants hands-on experience on real equipment to configure, test and troubleshoot IPv6.
2. AFRINIC has a Government Working Group (AfGWG). Here government players are brought together to be sensitized on the need to push for IPv6 adoption, and rollout of IXPs, among other. Here is the link
https://meeting.afrinic.net/afgwg/
3. Issuance of v6 blocks to ISPs. All ISPs have been issued V6 blocks by AFRINIC. What we should be seeing now is clients insisting they want the ISPs to pass the benefits to the end users.
What can you do?
- Government Organizations: Coordinate with industry to support and promote awareness and educational activities. Adopt regulatory and economic incentives to encourage IPv6 adoption. Require IPv6 compatibility in procurement procedures. Officially adopt IPv6 within your government agencies.
- Broadband Access Providers: Your customers want access to the entire Internet, and this means IPv4 and IPv6 websites. Offering full access requires running IPv4/IPv6 transition services and is a significant engineering project. Multiple transition technologies are available, and each provider needs to make their own architectural decisions.
- Internet Service Providers: Implement a plan that will allow your customers to connect to the Internet via IPv6 and IPv6/IPv4, not just IPv4. Businesses are beginning to ask for IPv6 over their existing Internet connections and for their co-located servers. Communicate with your peers and vendors about IPv6, and confirm their timelines for production IPv6 services.
- Internet Content Providers: Content must be reachable to future Internet customers. Plan on serving content via IPv6 in addition to IPv4 as soon as possible.
- Enterprise Customers: Email, web, and application servers must be reachable via IPv6 in addition to IPv4. Open a dialogue with your ISP about providing IPv6 services. Each organization must decide on timelines, and investment level will vary.
What is the role of Internet Service Providers (ISPs) in deploying IPv6?
*Some statistics on deployments*
Belgium 55.11%,
Germany 34.50%,
United States 32.83%
Greece 28.53%
Portugal 25.80%
Ecuador 20.8%,
Peru 19.35%,
Estonia 17,32%
Japan 16.61%,
Canada 9.83%
Norway 6.65%
Bolivia 3.8%
Italy 0.73%
Spain 0.7%
Denmark 0.61%
Some interesting findings is that deployment depends on the large ISPs uptake of v6 regardless of economic circumstances. e.g Peru has a lower per capita but has more deployment than Norway. Portugal with $22,000/capita and Greece $21,000/capita are outperforming Denmark with $60,000/capita. Canada $45,000/capita is trailing Estonia with $19,000/capita.
In the success stories, the majority of the commercial access market products have IPv6 enabled by default, and competing products have matching features.
Regards