IPv6 Transition Across Stakeholders

  • ‘National IPv6 Deployment Roadmap v-II’ was released by DoT in 2013 for IPv6 transition across various stakeholders in accordance with the National Telecom Policy (NTP)-2012. In the Roadmap v-II, service providers, Government organisations, content/ application provider, equipment manufacturers, etc. have been identified as main stakeholders. Since IPv6 is not backward compatible with IPv4, the transition to IPv6 is a complex and long term exercise during which both IPv4 and IPv6 will co-exist. Therefore, dual stack approach has been recommended to follow which means that a device should have capability to work on both the protocols (IPv4 & IPv6).

    NT Cell, DoT continuously facilitates all the stakeholders & reviews the progress of IPv6 transition through regular review meetings, letters and emails. It has conducted a large number of IPv6 workshops/seminars/conferences across the length and breadth of the country.

    Since the release of Roadmap v-II, significant progress has been made in IPv6 transition. The Government organisations are on the path to transit to IPv6. The IPv6 nodal officers have been appointed in all Central Ministries/Departments and States/UTs and instructions to procure IPv6 ready ICT equipment have been issued.NIC is working to transit the websites of all Government organisations hosted on their server.As per status received from industry association, the mobile handsets (2.5G & above) are IPv6 (dual stack) ready.

    Although a substantial amount of work has been done for IPv6 transition as stipulated in the Roadmap v-II,yetin some segments the transition is taking longer time due to the legacy networks and complex nature of the issue.

    In India, IPv6 addresses can be obtained from Indian Registry for Internet Names and Numbers (IRINN) that provides allocation and registration services of IP addresses and Autonomous System (AS) numbers (http://www.irinn.in/).