14 July 2011 (sent on behalf of the New Zealand IPv6 Task Force)

Awareness of the critically-important IPv6 addressing protocol has reached a near universal level among New Zealand’s large public and private sector organisations, but significant challenges remain in attaining widespread IPv6 adoption, especially amongst government agencies.

IPv6 is the ‘next-generation’ method of Internet addressing and will radically transform the Internet, fuelling its future growth and innovation. It is being formally adopted worldwide as the number of existing IPv4 addresses dries up.

94 percent of respondents to a recent survey of public and private sector Chief Information Officers (CIOs) are ‘adequately to well-informed’ about what IPv6 is and how it works. This compares with 72 percent in 2010 and 54 percent in 2009.

The third annual ‘CIO survey’ was conducted earlier this year by the New Zealand IPv6 Task Force in an effort to assess the IPv6-readiness of New Zealand’s largest organisations.

97 percent of survey respondents are aware that the Asia Pacific region has now effectively run out of IPv4 addresses. In 2010, 91 percent of respondents were aware of the impending IPv4 exhaustion; in 2009 that figure was 70 percent.

Encouragingly, the number of respondents who indicate they will upgrade their public Internet services, including websites, to handle IPv6 has increased. 61 percent indicate this will occur within 1-2 years, compared with 39 percent in 2010 and 25 percent in 2009. However, 50 percent still have ‘no plans’ to deploy IPv6 on their internal networks. This compares with 54 percent with no plans in 2010 and 57 percent in 2009.

For medium to large enterprises an important part of transitioning to IPv6 is obtaining hardware and software that supports the new addressing protocol. Recognising this important fact 76 percent of respondents have indicated IPv6 is ‘very to extremely important’ when making purchasing decisions. This compares with 50 percent in 2010 and 29 percent in 2009.

The New Zealand IPv6 Task Force also recently surveyed New Zealand telecommunications carriers and service providers to understand how well prepared they are to cope with the IPv6 transition.

Disappointingly, only 41 percent of respondents to that survey provide IPv6-enabled products and services. But in a nod to the importance of IPv6, 73 percent have a test environment for IPv6 and have made efforts to ‘evaluate’ IPv6 support and features in consumer premises equipment such as home routers and modems.

91 percent of service providers do not provide general information for their residential customers about IPv6, but 50 percent do have the capability to provide business customers with IPv6 planning information.

Task Force Convenor Murray Milner says the survey results clearly show that IPv6 awareness, strategy and planning is alive and well in New Zealand, but turning that awareness into actual adoption still remains a challenge. The lack of IPv6 service availability from Internet Service Providers and telecommunications carriers is also acting as a major brake on adoption, he says.

“The Task Force is now shifting its focus to issues of IPv6 adoption and identifying and helping to address the factors limiting uptake. In the consumer space, for instance, the lack of affordable CPE that supports IPv6 is an immense constraint.

“In the public sector sphere we continue to work closely with the Department of Internal Affairs, promoting the benefits of IPv6 adoption to government agencies and are working with local government body ALGIM preparing a White Paper on the adoption of IPv6 across the local government sector.”

More information about the Surveys, including full summaries of both, is available at http://tinyurl.com/69tgj8z .

More information about the New Zealand IPv6 Task Force’s activities is available at www.ipv6.org.nz .

ENDS

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