*Posted by Ron, ccNSO / ALAC Liaison* *Courtesy of ALAC* [image: 6UK] [image: IPv6 Forum logo] *6UK powerless to encourage IPv6 adoption. Board resigns.* 6UK powerless to encourage IPv6 adoption. Board resigns. Published on 07 December 2012 by philip in 6UK, The 6UK board has determined that the organisation cannot fulfil its purpose and therefore the directors, all volunteers, resigned at today’s AGM without seeking re-election. In the absence of nominations to the board, 6UK is to be wound up in accordance with its articles of association. 6UK is a not-for-profit membership organisation founded with seed funding of £20k from BIS in April 2010 to help the UK and UK organisations secure every competitive advantage available from the rapid adoption of the new protocol. The UK lags its neighbours, economies of similar size, G20 and EU member states when it comes to uptake of the new Internet protocol, IPv6. This is of growing concern because the RIPE NCC (the Regional Internet Registry for Europe, the Middle East and parts of Central Asia) began to allocate its very last address space of the previous protocol, IPv4, in September this year. Many factors impact the uptake of IPv6 and clearly free-market incentives are insufficient. Yet at a country level, delayed adoption significantly impacts national competitiveness, innovation and skills deleteriously. It may also hobble UK based companies facility to compete internationally.

From observing global IPv6 adoption patterns in recent times, one factor appears to dominate IPv6 adoption rates, namely government support. Countries with hands-off governments fall behind. Additional information

The Internet equivalent of a telephone number is known as an Internet Protocol address, or IP address for short. Just as you need someone’s telephone number to call him or her, network technology needs an address when instructed to dispatch a packet of data from one computer to another. Today, the Internet mostly uses IP version 4 (IPv4) but this has now reached the limits of its capacity. IANA – the Internet Assigned Numbers Authority – issued the last IPv4 address to the Regional Internet Registries in February 2011. Internet Protocol version 6 (IPv6) is the next generation protocol that provides vastly expanded address space, allowing the Internet to grow to many billions of times its current size. Every organisation must consider the implications of the need to transition to IPv6 and decide what action it needs to take. Fortunately, having been defined towards the end of the 1990s, IPv6 is a well understood and low risk protocol. Useful resources An executive briefing and project planning guide are available at: http://www.6uk.org.uk/resources For general information about 6UK, please visit: http://www.6uk.org.uk Note: The 6UK website will continue serving until end-December. For general information from the RIPE NCC: http://www.ipv6actnow.org RIPE NCC on IPv4 exhaustion: http://www.ripe.net/internet-coordination/ipv4-exhaustion For analyses at RIPE LABS: https://labs.ripe.net/statistics/?tags=ipv6 For country statistics by Cisco: http://6lab.cisco.com/stats/index.php Recent article about US government efforts: http://www.pcadvisor.co.uk/<http://www.pcadvisor.co.uk/news/internet/3400101/how-us-is-winning-race-next-gen-internet/> news/internet/3400101/how-us-<http://www.pcadvisor.co.uk/news/internet/3400101/how-us-is-winning-race-next...> is-winning-race-next-gen-internet<http://www.pcadvisor.co.uk/news/internet/3400101/how-us-is-winning-race-next-gen-internet/>(IPv6 is a requirement for network enabled products and services purchased by the US government.) The IPv6 Forum:http://www.ipv6forum.com The IPv6 Observatory: http://www.ipv6observatory.eu 11 Responses to “6UK powerless to encourage IPv6 adoption. Board resigns.” 1. Bernie says: 7 December 2012 at 6:20 pm If the big companies and institutions in the US would stop hoarding and give back all the IPV4 addresses they don’t need we’d have enough left for a long time. Have a look at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_assigned_/8_IPv4_address_blocks Companies sitting on entire class A blocks of over 16 million addresses each include IBM, apple, General Electric Company, Ford Motor Company, US Postal Service.. the list goes on and on. These companies only need a tiny fraction of these along with implementing NAT. The fact is that the reason we’re running out of IPV4 addresses is because the vast majority of them are being wasted. Instead of fixing that very simple problem (demand them back and only give them what they need) you’re trying to implement a huge change that will break almost every network based device in existence along with a significant amount of software. I’m glad you all resigned and the farce is now over – can we have or 20k back please. - Bob Smith says: 7 December 2012 at 10:27 pm Bernie, You miss the point that at the rate of growth of internet connected devices, a few more IPv4 addresses simply buys a relatively short amount of time, and as the Internet is getting exponentially more complicated as it grows, making the problem harder. NAT isn’t the solution either, as it has issues of its own. It’s simply not the case that IPv6 will go away if one sticks their head in the sand. It’s not quite cooked yet, but RIPE 554 is a step forward which will help its adoption. I’m sad to see that the government wouldn’t fix their procurements to include v6, which has effectively hamstrung this organisation, or effectively funded promotion of the migration. 20k isn’t even the price of a line-card for a router. 2. Mark says: 7 December 2012 at 10:26 pm IPv6 is mature, stable and works really well so please stop spreading fear, uncertainty and doubt about it breaking networks because it’s simply not true. 3. Christian de Larrinaga says: 7 December 2012 at 11:21 pm I’m very sorry to learn this news. After ten years + trying to generate awareness in the UK about IPv6 I was delighted when in 2010 the BIS chipped in to help found an industry body with strong credentials to promote IPv6 adoption. It seems the old challenge of the UK government waiting for Industry and Industry waiting for the government hasn’t been resolved. More IP addresses are needed if economic growth is to be secured particularly in digital services to the premises, sensor networks, electronic media and financial services and these addresses will have to be IPv6. IPv4 is effectively exhausted. ISOC UK England will continue to prioritise the adoption of v6 in the UK. 4. Sam says: 8 December 2012 at 12:09 am It is a big problem that so many organisations sit on blocks but equally sad is the lack of willing from government procurement measures. Lets hope the network administrators around are future proofing the nations systems. Also the guy who said v6 will break software… Why of why would you ever reference a ip in code??