Why you should start caring about internet protocol numbers

Recently, one of the internet service providers sounded the alarm that has been well known within the internet technical community.

The provider was alerting the public about the inevitable reality — that the internet protocol numbers (IP numbers) are getting depleted and will soon be out of supply.

An IP number is a unique value that any device needs before it can connect to the internet. Usually the user does not really care about it since the service provider automatically provides it at the point of connecting to the internet.

But the general user needs to start caring since internet service providers will soon run out of these numbers and potentially fail to provide internet connectivity when users need it.

The reason these numbers are running out is that they belong to the first generation internet, which had a total address space of about four billion numbers.

In today’s world with about seven billion human beings, most of whom have more than two or three devices connecting to the internet, it is clear that the first generation numbers, commonly known as IP version 4 (IPv4) are not sufficient to connect everyone to the internet.

NUMBERS DEPLETED

The good news is that internet engineers had already predicted the shortage more than 20 years ago, in 1996, when they created the next generation internet number protocol commonly known as IP version 6 (IPv6).

In Africa, these critical numbers are supplied and managed by the continental body known as Afrinic, which works in conjunction with ICANN, the global internet governance body.

The other global regions, such as America, Europe and Asia, have already depleted their stock of IPv4 and have been implementing the new generation protocol over the last decade.

Africa has not had the pressure to transition to the new numbering system because of the misplaced comfort that we still have a sufficient stock of numbers from the old IPv4 platform.

Various projections based on the current consumption rates, however, indicate that Africa has a stock of the old generation numbers to last between three to five years.

After that, any service provider wishing to connect customers to the internet will need to have deployed the new generation IPv6 platform. These new platform has a much larger address space and with better security features than what is currently available on IPv4 platform.

OBSTACLES TO TRANSITION

So why are big service providers not keen on deploying this new platform?

The biggest obstacle to transiting from the old IPv4 to the new IPv6 platform is the gap between the technical and the business leadership in most organizations.

There is no business incentive to transition since the old platform is still working and the scarcity crunch has not yet kicked. However, progressive service providers are preparing today for what will inevitably happen in another three to five years.

If your internet service providers is NOT preparing today for the transition, you as their customer should be worried. This is because your reliable connectivity to the internet, three to five years from today, will depend on how IPv6-ready your provider is.

As the rest of the world moves to the new platform, it means that you may not access selected websites abroad that are purely hosted on the new IPv6 platform — unless your network has also transitioned.

The time to push for the IPv6 transition is now. Call your internet service provider today and ask them about their transition plans. If you are unable to get timeline commitments for the transition, then it is time you migrated to another provider.