ATCON, NiRA, others commence IPV6 Int’l workshop to deepen penetration
As part of the efforts to deepen the penetration and adoption of Internet Protocol Version Six (IPV6) in Nigeria, AFRINIC in partnership with the Association of Telecom Companies of Nigeria (ATCON), Nigeria Internet Registration Association (NiRA), and the University of Ibadan (UI) have commenced the international workshop on Internet Number Resources Management (INRM) and IPV6 in Lagos.
In his welcome address, the President, ATCON, Mr Olusola Teniola, represented by Anthony Nwosu, Ist Vice President, ATCON, said that it embarked on this knowledge upgrading event which is the fourth edition with its partners because majority of our networks in Nigeria are not IPV6 compatible, and this poses a threat to Nigerian ICT development.
He added that ATCON has invested heavily and still investing in the adoption of IPV6 to increase the productivity and contribution level to our network engineers in the implementation and deployment of IPV6 for Nigerian ICT/telecoms development among others.
In his address, the President of NiRA, Rev Sunday Folayan, represented by Mr Mohammed Rudman, Chairman, Council of Nigeria IPV6 said that IPV6 will open a pool of Internet addresses that is a billion-trillion times larger, virtually inexhaustible than the total pool of IPV4 address which is about 4.3 billion.
He disclosed that most of the developed world have already embraced IPV6 with countries competing for positions in the global ranking on IPV6 adoption.
“Unfortunately, most of the Africa countries are late on this mass migration, with Nigeria particularly lagging behind even within Africa, this should not be taken lightly, considering that we have the largest number of Internet users in Africa.
“For example out of 103 Autonomous System Numbers registered in Nigeria only 4 are live on IPV6, even the 4 are not propagating it properly on the net. It is noteworthy to mention that over 30 organisations have acquired IPV6 from AFRINIC but most of them are not using it.”
He highlighted that one of the challenges identified for the lack of IPV6 adoption in Nigeria is the lack of the required technical skills, adding that this training will expose the participants to the need for the IPV6 and equip them with the right set of skills to assist their organisations to migrate to IPV6 so that Nigeria occupy its rightful position in the global IPV6 ranking.
