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Experts in the information and technology sector in Nigeria have said that the deployment of IPv6 is a more sustainable solution that can deliver economic and social opportunities for the future of the Internet economy, as compared to other stop gap measures.
They also hint that while the abounding business and innovation opportunities alone are reason enough for the ICT Industry to make a quick transition to IPv6 capable IT infrastructure, IPv6 implementation brings much more to the table including increased security and ease of management.
While presenting his keynote address at the 2017 international workshop on IPv6 & INRM, Umar Garba Danbatta, Executive Vice Chairman, Nigerian Communications Commission said that the Nigerian ICT Industry has witnessed tremendous growth, from just 200 Internet Users in 2002 to over 93 Million in 2017.
According to ‘Internet World Stats’ Nigeria currently ranks 8th in the statistics of global Internet users, with 48.8% penetration as at March 2017.
Danbatta explained that with this growth comes the challenge of sustaining the development to ensure that the industry maintains global relevance and contends with challenges of low Internet penetration, quality of service, cyber security incidents with their attendant security implications as well as issues with the Nation’s perception index amongst others.
“Therefore, realizing the importance of IPV6 has tasked the NCC to begin the process for the Nigerian ICT Industry to leverage on the potentials of IPv6 and prepare for the next phase of Internet growth,” he said.
On the importance of deploying IPv6 he said the infrastructure features a network layer that ensures simpler security management than IPv4, because it has inbuilt security to facilitate encryption and authentication of communications.
He added that having a full IPv6 infrastructure also makes network management easier and cost effective. “It has the advantage of a huge IP address space and an efficient routing mechanism. It reduces the need for routing tables, and also reduces server load,” he noted.
Olusola Teniola, President, Association of Telecommunications Companies of Nigeria (ATCON) said that the need to migrate to IPv6 is long overdue and ATCON is not particularly happy that majority of its networks in Nigeria are not IPv6 compatible, and this poses a threat to Nigerian ICT development.
According to Teniola, “The Nigerian ICT sector can no longer afford to take the back seat in the global ICT development. To leapfrog the adoption of IPv6, the Association has taken a further step to involve the two key major stakeholders
He disclosed that the National Executive Council of ATCON, under the leadership of Olusola Teniola intends to enlarge the scope of this workshop to Nigerian IPv6 Conference by next year’s edition, adding that the direct implication of this proposed move by ATCON is to widen the market and accelerate the adoption and implementation of IPv6 for the good of the industry.
“The dividend pervasive broadband may be farfetched if as an industry or a country we are not working towards broadband meeting with technology. As we all know that when Internet of Things (IoTs) take their place in our country an individual may need more than ten IP addresses to enjoy the benefits that comes with IoTs,” Teniola stressed.
The Director General, NITDA, who was represented by Tare Ambi, Zonal Director, NITDA said that IP version 4 is still very pervasive in the world today, however its usefulness will soon fade because of its limited address space, limited mobility, limited management, limited security, and the inability to support innovative and complex technologies such as Internet of Things (IoT), cloud services, IP telephony, and Artificial Intelligence (AI).
“The best time to start the implementation of IPv6 is now.The international registries like IANA, announced as long ago as 2011 that it had no more blocks of IPv4 left to distribute.
“Asia-Pacific registry APNIC reached IPv4 exhaustion in 2011, the same fate was experienced by European RIPE-NCC registry in 2012 and South American LACNIC in 2014. ARIN reached its final stages of IPv4 in 2014. These statistics show that IPv4 has outlived its usefulness and IPv6 is here to take over,” Ambi noted.
JUMOKE AKIYODE
