IPv6: India begins to issue Next Version of Internet Addresses

IPv6 (Internet Protocol Version 6) addresses have started being issued in India under the supervision of Indian Registry for Internet Names and Numbers (IRINN) under a discount of 60% in the soft launch of the addresses.

According to the CEO of National Internet Exchange of India (NIXI), the soft launch is done to test the compatibility of the software and hardware needed to support IPv6. He said that industrial launch of IPv6 will take place in a few months.

Currently, the IPv6 addresses are being issued by IRINN at a rate starting at Rs. 21,999 as opposed to Rs. 66,000 followed in the Asia Pacific region. IRINN is established by the government-run NIXI. APNIC, which is one of the five organizations authorized to issue internet addresses has recognized IRINN to issue IPv6 addresses in India.

IPv4 used currently has a lot of disadvantages. The IPv4 addresses are very limited. Often, service providers issue one IP addresses to many users making it very hard to identify the end user.

According to Sanjaya who is the director of services and operations at APNIC, IPv6 has a huge number of addresses available which can allow the Internet Service Providers to assign a unique address to each user. This can easily help identify the end user.

IPv6 is the latest update of Internet Protocol. It has been developed to replace the earlier IPv4 which is still widely used. Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) has developed IPv6 as a solution to the problem of IPv4 having limited number of addresses.