Today, the traditional communication networks
are undergoing a big change and are converging into packet based Next
Generation Networks (NGN) which run on Internet Protocol (IP). The Internet
Protocol is basically a communications protocol used for relaying packets
of data across a network. The current version of the Internet Protocol IPv4 is
about 27 year old l having many limitations. It is to be replaced by Internet
Protocol version 6 (IPv6) to overcome the limitations.
On the occasion of the ‘World IPv6 Launch
Day’ tomorrow (on 6th June
2012), major Internet Service Providers, networking equipment manufacturers and
web companies around the world are coming together to permanently enable IPv6
for their products and services. This day, being organized by Internet Society,
represents a major milestone in the global deployment of IPv6.It builds on the
successful one-day ‘World IPv6 Day’ event held last year on 8 June wherein ,
top websites and Internet Service Providers around the world, joined together
for a successful 24-hour global-scale trial of the new Internet Protocol, IPv6.
As a result of the initiatives undertaken by
Department of Telecommunication (DoT), majority of
the major service providers in India are ready to handle traffic & offer
IPv6 services at present. Despite the readiness of the major service providers,
there are issues to be addressed so as to ensure that the complete ecosystem
migrates to IPv6. The service providers have mainly three challenges i.e.
readiness of the content providers, equipment vendors and end user devices. To tackle the above challenges, a lead has
been taken by DoT and the respective stakeholders are
being pursued with by DoT through extensive
discussions and meetings.
India has at present 35 million IPv4
addresses against a user base of about 360 million data users. In addition,
Government is planning to have a target of 160 million and 600 million
broadband customers by the year 2017 and 2020 respectively. Moreover, there is
a strong security requirement to provide unique IP address to each individual
data user. As IPv6 is not backward compatible with IPv4, the transition to IPv6
is likely to be a complex, mammoth and long term exercise during which both
IPv4 and IPv6 will co-exist. In order to
facilitate the widespread introduction of IPv6 in India, a policy document
titled ‘National IPv6 Deployment Roadmap’ was released by the DoT in July 2010. The first initiative of its kind by a
Government anywhere in the world, the roadmap’s main focus was to educate/ sensitise the Indian ecosystem about the issues related to
IPv6 and enable it to take the first step in the transition towards IPv6.
Accordingly, following policy decisions were taken:
i)
All
major Service Providers will target to handle IPv6 traffic and offer IPv6
services by December-2011
ii)
All
Central and State government ministries and departments, including its PSUs,
shall start using IPv6 services by March-2012.
iii)
Formation
of IPv6 Task Force
An India IPv6 Task
Force Task Force headed by Secretary (T) was formed and has a 3-tier structure
consisting of Oversight Committee, Steering Committee and 10 Working Groups.
Each tier has members from different organizations / stakeholders in PPP mode.
The current version of the Internet
Protocol IPv4 has many limitations. The biggest limitation
is its 32-bit addressing space resulting in about 4.3 billion IP
addresses. The rapid growth of internet,
wireless subscribers and deployment of NGN technology has accelerated consumption of IP
addresses with the result that IPv4 addresses are almost exhausted today. To
overcome this problem of shortage, Internet Protocol version 6 (IPv6) was
developed by the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) way back in early
1990s. The IPv6 improves on the addressing capacities of IPv4 by using 128 bits
addressing instead of 32 bits, thereby practically making available an almost
infinite pool of IP addresses. Besides, it also offers several other advantages
over IPv4. IPv6 has been designed with
many new features which make it possible to develop entirely new applications
which are not possible in the IPv4 protocol, supports end-to-end security, autoconfiguration
simplifies network configuration and IP
Host Mobility etc.
There was a need to have IPv6 test bed in
India so that the vendors and stakeholders can test their equipments for IPv6
compatibility and readiness. Accordingly, a IPv6 test
bed has been installed by Telecom Engineering Centre (TEC), a technical wing of
DoT, to foster explicit IPv6 harmonisation
across the entire ecosystem.
To address the various problems being faced by the
stakeholders regarding IP address allocation from APNIC, the National Internet
Registry (NIR) has been approved by APNIC in India for allocation of IPv6
address in a systematic manner with a big pool to cater to all future
requirements and will start functioning shortly.
Source : PIB Release, June 5, 2012
No comments:
Post a Comment