IPv6 window closing

South African Internet experts agree the window of opportunity to convert to the new Internet Protocol Version 6 (IPv6) address format is growing smaller. But, they differ on whether it is time to panic.

"The change from IPv4 to IPv6 is going to be the issue that Y2k wasn't," says Alan Levin, chairman of the South African Chapter of the Internet Society.

However, Calvin Browne, a director of UniForum, the company that maintains the .co.za registry, says Internet service providers and companies will only convert to the new format once there is some kind of incentive in terms of either money, or the world finally runs out of IPv4 addresses.

"Until we have a definite motive for the conversion to happen, there will be little in terms of panic," he says.

IPv4 has been in use since 1981 as the standard address method for the Internet. However, in the late 1990s, rumblings about its limitations began to be heard, primarily from academic circles.

Geoff Huston, an Australian academic; and Tony Hain, senior technical leader of IPv6 technologies at Cisco Systems, have been at the forefront of the worldwide debate on the possible expiry of IPv4 addresses. Using various mathematical formulae, both have come up with differing views of when the IPv4 will run out of valid new addresses.

Both agree there is a total of about 4.4 billion IPv4 addresses, but that wastage through incorrect allocations and the proliferation of networked individual units, such as mobile phones, means that addresses could run out somewhere between 2010 and 2024.

Andrew Alston, CTO for academic and educational network Tenet, says the difference between the number of addresses supported by IPv4 compared with IPv6 "would be like comparing a packet of cigarettes to the solar system".

Alston says while some preparation has been done within the academic institutions for conversion to IPv6, very little has been done within industry.

"We should have started panicking years ago," he says.

Levin says the conversion process to IPv6 rests on the shoulders of industry such as the first tier ISPs, but little work has been done to promote discussion or even prepare the rest of the private sector for it.

"There is a generally massive lack of IPv6 skills and, once conversion has to happen, there will be panic," he says.

Martin May, regional director for networking vendor Enterasys, says: "This is a chicken and egg situation. Because ISPs are not offering IPv6 services, corporates cannot implement the technology, and because corporates are not asking for IPv6 services, ISPs are not investing in the technology. Unless this situation changes soon, we're going to end up with a crashing urgency to build skills and local services in two to three years."

UniForum's Browne says his organisation has run some tests on implementing IPv6 and it is busy with its application to the African Regional Internet Registry (AfriNIC) to receive its allocation of addresses.

"We should start offering IPv6 addresses by September," he says.

Internet Solutions CTO Prenesh Padayachee says his company has run some tests, but it has not begun production of IPv6 addresses.

He says the demand for conversion to IPv6 depends on the organisations - with inward focused companies not feeling the urgency as much as outward facing enterprises.

"The window of opportunity is limited to about two years maximum," Padayachee says.