Nigeria matches slowly to IPv6 visibility on internet

Nigeria has made marginal progress in her journey to Internet Protocol Version 6 (IPv6) visibility on the internet, Nigeria CommunicationsWeek has learnt.

Internet Protocol version 6 (IPv6) is the latest version of the Internet Protocol (IP), the communications protocol that provides an identification and location system for computers on networks and routes traffic across the Internet.

It deals with the long-anticipated problem of IPv4 address exhaustion.

According to a report conducted by Mohammed Rudman, chairman, Nigeria IPv6 Council, and obtained by Nigeria CommunicationsWeek, there are 50 networks in the country that have acquired IPV6 out of which only five networks are active.

Nigeria CommuncationsWeek last check two years ago, revealed that the country had three networks out of 103 Autonomous Systems (Ases) in the country using IPv6 as at end of May 2016 but this year as at March 1, she has five networks out of 134 Autonomous Systems (Ases).

Autonomous System Number identifies networks on the internet and it is acquired from AfriNIC.

According to him, ‘the IPv6, otherwise known as the new Internet protocol opened up a pool of Internet addresses that is a trillion times larger than the total pool of IPv4 address which is about 4.3 billion, which means the available number of IP address is essentially unlimited.

This large address space is coming handy as the world’s population continue to grow, which now stood at 7.6 billion, the increase in new Generic Top Level Domains (gTLDs) approved by ICANN, and the wave of Internet of Things (IoT) released every day’.

“IPv6 has potential of preserving more of everything good in today’s Internet, which includes but not limited to auto-configuration, seamless mobility, automated network management, end-to-end-security and new optional service levels.

“The developed world has already embraced IPv6, with countries competing for positions in the global ranking on IPv6 adoption.

The major content producers such as Google, Facebook, Microsoft etcetera have all adapted IPv6 giving the opportunity to IPv6 networks access to their content.

“Regrettably, most of African countries are late comers on this mass migration, with Nigeria particularly lagging behind even within Africa, this should not be taken lightly considering that we have the largest number of Internet users in Africa as of today and the seventh in the world.

Chris Uwaje, director general, director general, Delta State Innovation Hub (DS-IHUB), said Africa may not be globally competitive if the governments fail to adopt IPv6 on time, noting that IPv6 will one day become the absolute default Prefixes for the Internet.