Kenyan developers at the iHub are set to enjoy IPv6 (Internet Protocol version 6), a version of the Internet Protocol (IP) intended to succeed IPv4.
The next generation Internet protocol will be rolled out by iHub on the June 6 in partnership with the mobile network operator Safaricom.
IPv6 is designed to address the upcoming depletion of IPv4 addresses and therefore allows greater efficiency and flexibility in allocating addresses and routing traffic, says Erik Hersman, the iHub founder.
The two firms have been doing a pilot test for now a week and are set to launch this Wednesday at the iHub. iHub’s Network Manager Paul Muchene says this is the first ever partnership between a network operator and a tech incubation space in Africa and is set to put the developers in the country a notch higher.
According to Muchene, Safaricom has been the first telco in Africa to open its network for IPv6 testing and it’s now partnering with iHub Nairobi, which will see local developers use the greater address space for their applications and content.
Muchene says that although there are some 7 billion people in the world, IPv4 with only 4 billion addresses can no longer be used to support the growing number of devices that are going online. IPv6 allows a staggering 340,282,366,920,938,463,463,374,607,431,768,211,456 addresses (3.4 followed by 38 zeroes). That equates to 50 thousand trillion trillion (5 followed by 28 zeroes) addresses for every person in the planet!
Safaricom has been running IPv6 on its network for the last one year although it only recently opened the IPv6 address space to the public.
The technology needed more capacity internally and there looked like there was low demand from organizations in the country, Muchene says.
There are few IPv6 applications currently, adds Muchene.
He however says Kenyans are ready for the IPv6 even as the country’s technology sector booms with innovations.
Thibaud Rerolle, Safaricom’s technology director says that iHub is making ideas come true and will mostly encourage the community of developers to use the address space to come up products appropriate for the market.
According to Adiel Akplogan, AfriNIC CEO, IPv6 allocations and assignments have grown by more than 200 percent during the past 12 months with 33 African countries with at least one IPv6 prefix, Kenya being among them.
The Africa Network Information Center (AfriNIC), Africa’s regional Internet registry, has been encouraging governments, universities and corporations to move to IPv6 for the last six years and warning on the exhaustion of the IPv4 in less than two years.
The low move to IPv6 has been among other things been claimed to the lack of legacy systems, little content, migration costs and low broadband connections.
Rerolle argues the move will increase data uptake and support its growing 3G deployment and expanding their number of residential users with multiple gadgets. He adds that though AfriNIC still has stocks of IPv4, their validity is short-lived.
According to Rerolle, lack of IP addresses will pose a real threat to the firm’s subscriber growth and even a threat to business continuity but migration to IPv6 will offer Safaricom an opportunity to tap into new business opportunities made possible by a potentially large community of connected devices that will use this protocol exclusively.
Safaricom intends to deploy the platform gradually and iHub developer teams will play a central role in its testing by providing local products for its uptake.
