The meeting, to be held in Toronto, Canada, from April 18 to 21, will consider a number of draft policies and proposals. Some of the topics up for discussion by the Internet community are:
- Simplifying IPv6 allocation criteria
- Providing smaller blocks of IPv4 address space
- Handling IPv4 requests once address space becomes limited
- Changing the requirements for what information must be recorded in ARIN's WHOIS database
"The Internet has become an irreplaceable part of how consumers and
businesses communicate," John Curran, president and CEO of ARIN, said in
a statement.
"With less than 8% of IPv4 addresses still available, our mission is to
consider any policy changes necessary for this transition to occur
smoothly, and to continue discussions about this important issue. ARIN
XXV will include important discussions on draft address allocation
policy proposals, including several proposed changes that may affect
IPv6 adoption."
The transition to IPv6 is also being encouraged by the OECD who noted
"IPv6 use was growing faster than continued IPv4 use, albeit from a low
base. And several large-scale deployments are taking place or are
planned."
The report noted that "5.5% of networks on the Internet (1 800 networks)
could handle IPv6 traffic by early 2010. IPv6 networks have grown
faster than IPv4-only since mid-2007. Similarly, demand for IPv6 address
blocks has grown faster than demand for IPv4 address blocks. Even more
encouragingly, Internet infrastructure players seem to be actively
readying for IPv6, with one out of five transit networks (i.e. networks
that provide connections through themselves to other networks) handling
IPv6. In practice, several indicators are closely correlated and point
to the same countries as having the most IPv6 network services. These
include Germany, the Netherlands, the United States, and the United
Kingdom."
However the report found "the number of potential users of IPv6 is quite
high with over 90% of the installed base of operating systems being
IPv6-capable, and roughly 25% of end users running an operating system
that supports IPv6 by default in January 2010, such as Windows Vista or
Mac OS X."
But the report also found "actual IPv6 connectivity by users is very
low. A one year experiment by Google estimated that just 0.25% of users
had IPv6 connectivity (and chose IPv6 when given the choice) in
September 2009, up from less than 0.2% one year before. After France,
the top countries by percentage of native IPv6 capable users in
September 2009 were China, Sweden, the Netherlands, the United States,
and Japan."
The report also noted that "only 1.45% of the top 1000 websites had an
IPv6 website in January 2010, but this figure grew to 8% in March 2010
when Google websites were included. However, only 0.15% of the top 1
million websites had an IPv6 website in January 2010 (and just 0.16% in
March 2010). A trend may be emerging whereby large websites are
deploying IPv6 alongside IPv4, while the vast majority of smaller
websites remain available only over IPv4."
The report makes a number of recommendations, similar to those made in
another report from 2008. "In May 2008, the OECD warned that Governments
and business must tackle Internet address shortage together. In
particular, governments and business needed to work together more
effectively and urgently to meet the growing demand for Internet
addresses and secure the future of the Internet economy by implementing
IPv6. Not implementing IPv6, it warned, would impact the economic
opportunities offered by the Internet with severe consequences in terms
of stifled creativity and deployment of new services."
"As the pool of unallocated IPv4 addresses dwindles, all stakeholders
should anticipate the impacts of the transition period and plan
accordingly to gather momentum for the deployment of IPv6 to decrease
the pressure on IPv4. In particular, to create a policy environment
conducive to the timely deployment of IPv6, governments should consider:
i) Working with the private sector and other stakeholders to increase
education and awareness and reduce bottlenecks; ii) Demonstrating
government commitment to adoption of IPv6; and iii) Pursuing
international co-operation and monitoring IPv6 deployment."
The OECD report is available from:
www.oecd.org/sti/ict/ipv6
More information on the ARIN meeting is available from:
https://www.arin.net/participate/meetings/ARIN-XXV/