Regulatory, Financing and Technical Solutions for the IPv6 with Special Guest Vint Cerf

EIF Dinner Debate

• FUTURE OF TECHNOLOGY

IPv6 (Internet Protocol version 6) is a version of the Internet Protocol (IP) intended to succeed IPv4, which is the protocol currently used to direct almost all Internet traffic.

In February 2011, the Internet Assigned Numbers Authority (IANA), responsible for the global coordination of the DNS Root, IP addressing, and other Internet protocol resources, ran out of IPv4 addresses. Currently, while each Regional Internet Registry has still some IPv4 addresses to allocate, it is impossible to predict when they will also run out of them.

The depletion of IP addresses will endanger the development of Internet and ICT services as we know it. Therefore, it is high time IPv6 to be adopted for continued Internet growth. Also, there are major technical challenges to the deployment of IPv6 in regard to its compatibility to IPv4 and the interaction between IPv4 and IPv6 users.