Poll: Do You Plan To Adopt IPv6?

IPv6 is the upgrade for the Internet protocol, and could allow new applications, but this week it was revealed that the UK body promoting IPv6 has disbanded, saying it can do nothing about the “market failure” which has blocked its adoption.

As it pulled its own plug, 6UK blamed the government for not doing more to promote the new protocol. IPv6 would allow more IP addresses for everyone, but there are ways to make the current version work by sharing IP addresses through a scheme called NAT. This means there’s no compelling business reason for any individual organisation to adopt it, said 6UK’s spokesman Philip Sheldrake, even though there would be huge benefits if we all used it.

No IPv6 support

Given this stalemate, 6UK had hoped for a bit of government support – in the form of actually using IPv6, at least to allow organisations to be addressed using IPv6, from outside. But they received absolutely no support at all.

“It  beggars belief that you can’t access any UK government website using IPv6,” Sheldrake told us. And indeed,we were surprised.
There has been a huge effort to establish IPv6 in the nearly-twenty years since it was defined. Let us know what your response is. Now we want to know how many organisations generally have got IPv6, or plan to use it in the near future. We want to hear if you are implementing it for external connections, or on your internal network – or nowhere at all.

Public sector IT – it’s not all bad! Try our quiz!