Migration to new internet commences tomorrow

. . . Nigerian internet users may witness restricted access
Ben Uzor Jr

Come June 8, 2011, Nigerian internet users will be restricted from accessing the World Wide Web (www). The reason for this however is not far fetched as a test run programme which demands 24-hour migration to a new Internet Protocol (IP) platform (IPv6) will be conducted globally by internet bodies on the said date. Moreover, IPv6 is the sixth revision to the Internet Protocol and the successor to IPv4 platform. For 30 years running, IPv4 has been the foundation of the internet and now that it is almost out of addresses, the transition to IPv6 is no longer a matter of choice but necessity.

Earlier this year, the last batch of IPv4 addresses was allocated at a ceremony in Miami to Asia Pacific Network by Internet Assigned Numbers Authority (IANA) the body that oversees the global allocation of internet addresses. This however underscores the extent to which the internet has become an essential part of modern life. When the test run commences tomorrow, according to analyst who spoke at a roundtable forum organised by DigitalSENSE Africa (DSA) in Lagos recently, Internet Service Providers (ISPs) will be incapable of connecting to Yahoo, Google, Facebook and other online communities.

This is principally because all ISPs in Nigeria are currently on IPv4, which does not operate in concert with IPv6. According to the analysts, the disruption is expected to last for no more than a day. The test run, according to industry analysts was in commemoration of the World IPv6 Day. Businesses wishing to remain competitive, Chima Oleru, a network engineer told Business Day, must apply a mechanism to their infrastructure that would allow both versions to run. “Therefore, it is essential that your network devices are upgraded and configured to run dual-stack, in order to cope with the coming IPv6 traffic.

Dual-stack refers to running IPv4 and IPv6 in parallel. This will allow your servers to respond simultaneously both to the old IPv4 requests, and to the newer IPv6-connected devices”, Oleru disclosed. Some telecommunication companies (telcos) like MTN, Globacom and Etisalat have allayed fears of restricted access to the internet, claiming that they are fully prepared for the migration. Echoing their views, Gbenga Adebayo, president, Association of Licensed Telecommunications Operators of Nigeria (ALTON), stated that telcos have deployed and are deploying world’s most modern technologies.

“It has prepared us well ahead towards significant technology migration as we now face in the world today, therefore we do not foresee any impact on internet networks and users in the course of this migration”. Adebayo went further, “We are fine tuning our equipment and infrastructure to support the migration form IPv4 to IPv6.” According to him, migration will throw another challenge to telcos in terms of infrastructure and software upgrade, hardware replacement. “IPv6 migration may have an impact on ISPs without requisite funding. They may not be able cope.

“It might also open up new opportunities for new operators to take advantage of.” Nkemdilim Nweke, executive director, operations, DigitalSENSE Africa does not believe that Nigeria is indeed ready for this transition, further disclosing that though Nigeria now has 16 allottees of IPv6, none offers internet related services in the country on this new IP platform. She therefore urged Nigerian organisations to position themselves to take advantage of the limitless opportunities IPv6 offers to innovative users of the internet and developers of new technologies.

“We, therefore call on the federal government to establish a task force through it agencies to take immediate proactive actions that will ensure that Ministries, Departments and Agencies (MDAs) as well as organisations in Nigeria prepare their services for IPv6 migration, encourage greater Research and Development investment in activities around the future internet, encourage and support private sector participation as awareness creation is key to the early adoption of the second internet”, she stated.

However, the phenomenal growth of the internet into various areas of society such as mobile devices, IP based consumer electronics, household appliances and even the automobile industry has accelerated the exhaustion of IPv4 addresses. “The heart of any IP network is the IP address system. Every device on the IP network requires a unique address to speak with another device on the network. IPv4 provides 4.3 billion addresses and a large portion of these addresses are unavailable for public allocation.

“IPv4 addressing structure does not provide sufficient publicly routable addressing which will enable a distinct address to every internet service or device”, Cleopas Angaye, director-general, National Information Technology Development Agency (NITDA) said at the roundtable conference. IPv6 functions similarly to IPv4 in that it provides the unique, numerical IP addresses necessary for Internet-enabled devices to communicate. Furthermore, IPv6 is the next generation IP address standard intended to supplement, and eventually replace, the IPv4 protocol used for Internet services.

“IPv4 uses 32 bits for its Internet addresses. That means it can support 2^32 IP addresses in total — around 4.29 billion. That may seem like a lot, but all 4.29 billion IP addresses have now been assigned to various institutions, leading to the crisis we face today. IPv6 utilizes 128-bit Internet addresses. Therefore, it can support 2^128 internet addresses — 340,282,366,920,938,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 of them to be exact. That’s a lot of addresses, so many that it requires a hexadecimal system to display the addresses. In other words, there are more than enough IPv6 addresses to keep the Internet operational for a very long time”, Adebayo noted.

Giving insight into some reasons why ISPs are not implementing IPv6, Muhammed Rudman, managing director, Internet Exchange Point of Nigeria (IXPN) said ISPs lacked the technical know-how to migrate. “ISPs are faced with challenges bordering on core equipment compatibility issues, lack of IPv6 upstream service providers, and more importantly, no request from Nigerian internet users”, he added. Finally, IPv6 can accommodate the immensely growing number of users, devices with wireless or wired access, and web services on the Internet. Moreover, this new IP platform will enable Nigerian enterprise customers to have more public IP addresses to allocate within their organisations.