VietNamNet Bridge - As IPV4 is becoming exhausted, the Ministry of Information and Communications has formed the National Steering Board to promote the use of IPV6 network.

Headed by Deputy Minister of Information and Communications Le Nam Thang, the agency is in charge of researching and working out policies to develop and apply IPV6, mapping out the roadmap for changing IPV4 to IPV6 in Vietnam.

Other members of the board include the Director of the Vietnam Network Information Centre and officials of departments under the Ministry of Information and Communications, the Vietnam Post and Communications Group (VNPT), the Military Telecommunications Corporation (Viettel), Internet Service Providers (ISP), some universities and representatives of IT Agencies in related ministries.

The Vietnam Network Information Centre said its facilities are now available for ISPs to test widespread IPV6 connections to step-by-step set up the national IPV6 network.

By the end of 2008, 23 of 40 of the centre’s members were provided with IPV6 addresses. Vietnam now ranks first in Southeast Asia and the 22^nd worldwide for the number of IPV6 addresses.

IPv6 is an Internet Layer protocol for packet-switched internetworks. IPV4 is currently the dominant Internet Protocol version, and was the first to receive widespread use. The Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) has designated IPV6 as the successor to version 4 for general use on the Internet.

IPv6 has a much larger address space than IPV4, and provides flexibility in allocating addresses and routing traffic. The extended address length (128 bits) is intended to eliminate the need for network address translation to avoid address exhaustion, and also simplifies aspects of address assignment and renumbering when changing Internet connectivity providers.

(Source: VNE)