UUNET Kenya is upgrading its data delivery process by migrating the company’s corporate clients to the next generation address distribution system called Internet Protocol version 6 (IPv6).
The firm’s Managing Director Tom Omariba said they have already migrated servers hosting Domain Name Systems (DNS), email authentication and Web services.

The company has been using the IPv4 for its data distribution. In a statement, Omariba said the IPv6 will offer significant networking advances compared to the previous IPv4 that is currently being faced out.

“One of the main benefits of IPv6 is the ability to provide many more addresses for devices on the Internet. With IPv6, there will be an almost infinite number of IP addresses available, compared to the total 4.2 billion address space for IPv4 which is rapidly getting depleted.” said Omariba.

Although no regulatory challenges are anticipated in the migration process, companies will need to invest in upgrading their IT systems, especially old operating systems and applications that do not support IPv6.

“Old routing and switching devices that do not support IPv6 will need to be replaced. This is because while most equipment you buy today will support IPv6, a significant part of the Internet is built on hardware that dates from several years ago, back when IPv6 support (particularly in hardware) was not a priority,” said Omariba..

A significant number of organizations still have computers running versions of Microsoft Windows that do not support IPv6. Many large companies still maintain some legacy Windows versions ranging from Windows 98 to Windows XP on the client side and Windows NT to Windows Server 2003 on the server end, which may not support IPv6 natively.

However, Omariba acknowledged a slow up-take of IPv6 by most corporate networks, saying organizations still do not see a compelling business case to be made for migrating to IPv6.

“If your organization's IPv4 network has already been tweaked and tuned so that it works just fine to support your company's present business goals, the, management will always ask, "If it's not broken, why spend money to fix it?"

He said although this may be true,in an increasingly interconnected global networking environment,  “it is also somewhat shortsighted. The earlier you start, the better, knowing that IPv4 exhaustion will sooner rather than later catch up with us.”