South African companies have been slow to adopt new Internet protocols that could undermine efforts to secure online transactions and grow the internet, says an industry insider.
“While the uptake of IPv6 in South Africa is increasing, it is still not advancing fast enough. Despite the many advantages offered by IPv6, uptake around the world has been relatively slow,” said Edward Lawrence, business development director at Workonline Communications.
IPv6, or Internet protocol version six, uses a longer set of numbers to allow devices to connect to the internet. These numbers offer more security than the previous version and allows for many more devices to connect.
The system was developed by the Internet Engineering Task Force in response to the threat of exhausting network addresses with IPv4 as the Internet grew rapidly.
Despite the formalisation of IPv6 in 1998, a lack of understanding has contributed to slow implementation.
Search giant Google’s tracker revealed that global adoption is less than 12%. In South Africa, adoption is estimated at 0,3%.
“We have noticed that a number of people do not know about or understand IPv6, which contributes to the issue of slow adoption. However, a number of major network service providers and Internet service providers in South Africa are adopting the standard,” said Lawrence.
As more people buy mobile smart devices that connect to the Internet, each device will require an Internet address that allows it to connect.
IPv6 can assign up 5 000 times more address space compared to IPv4, resulting in growth of the Internet, ideal for the expected development of the “Internet of Things”.
“Without IPv6 there is no future of the Internet, as it can’t grow. There will come a point where IPv4 runs out in Africa in the same way it has in other regions, and we have a unique opportunity to learn from these regions and even ensure that we are ahead of the curve again, by benefiting from the lessons learnt,” said Lawrence.
Workonline Communications is offering training to help companies migrate their networks to the new platform.
“To accelerate its deployment in Africa, Workonline Communications is offering 100Mbit/s of free IPv6 transit to qualifying AfriNIC local Internet registry members,” Lawrence said.
AfriNIC is the regional internet registry for Africa that administers internet number resources, including IPv4 and IPv6 addresses.