Dionisia Tabureguci
Perhaps amongst the monumental global gatherings taking place so far this century is the meeting last month in Seoul, South Korea, of OECD (Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development) member countries to discuss the future of the Internet economy.

OECD member countries are some of the world’s major economies from across Europe to the United States, Canada and Mexico, Asia, Australia and New Zealand.

The heart of concerns at that meeting - attended by close to 2200 participants including OECD ministers, senior government officials, heads of major intergovernmental organisations, industry leaders and representatives of the Internet technical community, civil society and organised labour - was a very simple question: What is the future of the Internet economy?

The discussion surrounding this issue was anything but simple for the average Internet consumer. Not that the Internet fathers had no idea where the Internet was headed.

Their concerns had more to do with the world running out of Internet addresses as soon as two years from now - by 2010 or 2011 - an outlook that creates discomfort for many as it has implications on the ability of the Internet, already a backbone of economy worldwide, to continue to play this important role.

A report on Internet Address Space put out by OECD a few months before the Seoul meeting, and which was subsequently discussed at this meeting, highlighted the concern shared by many.

“One of the major challenges for all stakeholders in thinking about the future of the Internet is its ability to connect billions of people and devices,” the report said.

“The objective of this report is to raise awareness among policymakers of capacity and limitations of the Internet Protocol version 4 (IPV4) and to demonstrate the need for all stakeholders, including governments, to play a part in the deployment of IPV6.”

Indeed technical terms like IPV4 and IPV6 can be a put off for ordinary folks but to understand why there have been such concerns in the international community over the future of the Internet, it is a pre-requisite to know that Internet Protocol (IP) specifies how communications take place between one device and another through an addressing system.

The number of addresses that can possibly be generated by the IPV4 system (version 4 of the Internet Protocol and which is currently the dominant network layer for the Internet - wikipedia definition) is now known to be reaching its limit.

“There is now an expectation among some experts that the currently used version of the Internet Protocol (IPV4) will run out of previously unallocated address space in 2010 or 2011, as only 16 percent of the total IPV4 address space remains unallocated in early 2008,” the OECD report highlighted.

“The situation is critical for the future of the Internet economy because all new users connecting to the Internet, and all the businesses that require IP addresses for their growth, will be affected by the change from the current status of ready availability of unallocated IPV4 addresses.”

As such, one of the things that the Internet fathers had been promoting to the OECD countries at last month’s meeting was for their support in the deployment of the new addressing system called IPV6 (version 6 of the Internet Protocol), which can accommodate more sets of numbers and therefore generate more IP addresses.

At the end of that two-day meeting, the support from OECD countries was clear when, in their final communique titled: The Seoul Declaration For the Future of the Internet Economy, OECD countries expressed their readiness to pay attention to the challenges related to the new Internet by way of appropriate policies to address these challenges.

Among their declarations was the assurance they would”encourage the adoption of IPV6, in particular through its timely adoption by governments as well as large private sector users of IPV4 addresses, in view of the IPV4 depletion”.

It’s a huge score for those pushing for the adoption of IPV6. The biggest challenge the world had faced in this regard was that even though this seemed to be an urgent matter, getting mainly the network operators to step up to IPV6 was happening at a very slow pace.

“There is a chicken and egg situation,” said Franck Martin, chair of PICISOC (Pacific Islands Chapter of the Internet Society.

"Internet Providers say there is no demand for IPV6 but there can’t be a demand (applications and traffic) until people are provided with IPV6 addresses. IPV6 is available globally for many years now. IPV6 is a full and robust protocol to replace IPV4. Unfortunately, some implementations like MS-Windows XP are not compatible with IPV, some devices are not IPV6 ready, especially end-user devices like Wi-Fi access points.”

Martin, who attended the Seoul meeting, said it all boiled down to economics and this was what OECD countries have now realised, which was why they have taken a hands on approach to the shaping of the future of the Internet.

“If the infrastructure is not running on IPV6, it means that countries will miss out on new Internet developments and also new network deployments,” said Martin.

“If you have a project that requires many IPs like rolling out a new mobile network, you are stuck. It means you cannot do business, develop your company, etc. This has an economic impact for companies that do network, which will lead to countries lagging behind and they start to lose economic opportunities. It’s a little bit like companies still doing its business using faxes and not using e-mails. You can still do business using faxes only, but you will not get the cost savings of using e-mails. Furthermore, because your competition is using better communication systems, you will start to lose business to your competitors.”

He said it would be prudent for businesses to migrate to IPV6 if it does not want to be left behind.

“It takes about six months to one year to migrate a business to IPV6.The migration to IPV6 has a cost and no direct benefit.It all depends on the uptake of your competition. This uptake could be brutal and leave you behind. To minimise costs and risks, it is recommended for businesses to change today their procurement policies to ensure that all new equipment is IPV6 ready, to define now a plan to migrate to IPV6 and be ready to configure, deploy and train network technicians to IPV6, in order to be ready when the world starts moving,” Martin said.
But for network operators in the Pacific, all this talk may sound sensible but in their business realities, there are pros and cons to be carefully weighed.

Their umbrella organisation PITA (Pacific Islands Telecommunications Authority) said its members were well aware of the need to make the global Internet network IPV6 ready and the part they play in this compliance. But the cost factor involved had pushed the industry to go into this practically by maximising current resources on IP addressing while developing transition plans.

“Initially, it was a global scare (the running out of IP addresses) but there is now a more systematic approach to enable transitions which have been involving cooperation of many organisations and industry groups,” said Fiji-based PITA manager, Fred Christopher.

“Already, equipment manufacturers have standardised IPV6 scheme in new networking and routing equipments including computers, so over time, major portion of networks should already be IPV6 ready as old equipments are replaced and new services are implemented. For the Pacific, where there will be huge costs to buy new equipments that will not directly relate to new services or expansions, network operators in the Pacific will be quite restrictive to implement a transition just too soon without proper due diligence.”

Christopher said PITA, which has telecom/Internet regulators and well as network operators from 22 Pacific islands countries as its members, works closely with international bodies governing the Internet such as APNIC (Asia Pacific Network Information Centre (www.apnic.net) is one of five regional Internet Registries in the world).

It is responsible for distributing and registering Internet address resources throughout the Asia Pacific region), ICAAN (Editor’s note: ICANN (www.icann.org) is the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers and is responsible for managing and coordinating the Domain Name System to ensure that every Internet address is unique and that all users of the Internet can find all valid addresses) and other relevant bodies to provide awareness on IPV4 running out of addresses and in developing plans to implement the new IPV6.

“Technical training on IPV6 implementation, networking and routing are also part of the annual programme with the Pacific Network Operators Group (PacNOG) training held every June annually,” said Christopher.

The Seoul Declaration for the Future of the Internet Economy sees the OECD countries stating “our common desire to promote the Internet Economy and stimulate sustainable economic growth and prosperity by means of policy and regulatory environment that supports innovation, investment and competition in the Information and Communications Technology (ICT) sector.

“We will work with the private sector, civil society and the Internet community to secure ICT networks that underpin the Internet Economy as well as to take measures to protect the users of the Internet Economy, including the cross-border co-operation.”

With such a driven commitment from the world’s developed economies, Pacific islands countries will have to either follow suit or be left behind.