Filed in archive IP Address , News on July 24, 2010

India Targets Switch To IPv6 By March 2012

© Aldon

India announced plans to switch the country from IPv4 to IPv6. It is ordering all entities-from federal and state government ministries to public sector companies-to migrate to the new internet protocol version by March of 2012.

The main reason for the switch is the impending depletion of available IP addresses under the IPv4 protocol. Experts predict that there's less than one year before the full IPv4 address table is completely used up. That's 4.3 billion IP addresses, a negligible number compared to the number of possible addresses provided by IPv6: two to the power of 128.

A future rollout of new 3G and broadband wireless access services is pressuring country to switch over to IPv6 soon. The country has completed auctioning licenses for both and it plans to begin rolling out 3G spectrum officially in September.