IPv6 technology use grows by 150 percent
The Jakarta Post, Jakarta
A new form of internet protocol that will allow users bigger, faster downloads is quickly growing in popularity in the country, a study says.
Encouraged by the significant increase in the number of internet users and subscribers, internet service providers and academic institutions are beginning to implement IPv6 -- a more advanced version of the old 32-bit IPv4, which provides a much larger space for internet applications.
Research by the Asia Pacific Network Information Center has revealed that Indonesia experienced the second-highest growth in the Asia Pacific region after India for IPv6 users last year, with most of the growth being among internet service providers and academic institutions.
The Indonesian Association of Internet Service Providers (APJII) recorded 131,073 IPv6 address users as of 2004, with last year's growth in the use of the technology reaching 150 percent.
Currently, there are more than one million internet subscribers and more than 11 million users in Indonesia. APJII projects the number to grow by 50 percent by the end of the year.
Internet protocol, first developed in the United States in the late 1970s, is a method by which packets of data -- an e-mail note or a Web page -- are sent from one computer to another on the internet, each with a specific identification known as an IP address in the form of series of numbers.
Just like in a conventional postal service, the address tells the network where to send the data to. No two machines can have the same IP address and the number of configurations are arranged in such a way that they do not conflict with each other.
However, the first commercial internet protocol IPv4, using four digits configuration, is only able to provide four billion IP addresses, 75 percent of which are currently being used by the United States alone. Data from Allied Telesyn, a network solutions provider, shows that all the existing IPv4 addresses will be taken by about 2010.
However, the IPv6 system, which uses a six-digit configuration, provides more than 340 trillion trillion trillion addresses -- more than enough for everyone in the world to have multiple IP addresses -- and allows the internet to accommodate many more internet users.
"Indonesian ISPs (internet service providers) have already started using IPv6," AJPII head Heru Nugroho said.
"However, it will take at least 10 years for the technology to become fully operational in Indonesia and to reach the internet service end-users," he said, adding that IPv4 would still continue to be used by many people even though its more advanced version had entered the market.
He said there was no urgency for Indonesia to shift to the new technology as IPv6 was not yet being used globally. However, Indonesians should prepare to apply the technology when the time came that it was widely implemented, he said.
IPv6 is currently being aimed at high-end IT users, such as telecommunications companies, ISPs and offices with more than 1,000 computers in their networks.
The shift from IPv4 to IPv6 will require changes in hardware like switches, routers and carriers. Each change will need investments varying from US$1,000 to $10,000, according to Allied Telesyn Indonesia country manager Harfi Asra.
However, some of the currently used hardware could already support IPv6, needing only a switch over of software application, Heru said.
Low-end users would also be able to enjoy the advantages of the technology such as faster connections, triple play (integrated transmissions of visual, audio and conventional data) and a more secure addresses.
"Using the new IPv6 application will cost more to train and upgrade the engineers' skills than it will in any adjustment of physical infrastructure," Heru said.
Allied reports that academic institutions -- Lampung University in Bandar Lampung and Brawijaya University in Malang -- are trailblazing the technology in this country. (003)