[afripv6-discuss] What are the benefits of IPv6 over IPv4

[Hisham Ibrahim]

Dear all,
I see a lot of issues have been discussed and debated on this thread, I will try to go over some of them and give my 2 cents.
IPv6 uptake in the region is happening in the region slowly but surely, I see and understand the debates of the fact that we still have v4 space is keeping us from moving forward but also when I go back to the v6 numbers I feel more and more confident that we are on the right path.
In terms of allocation the numbers have jumped in from less than 15/32s in a year to 55 /32s in 2010 and 129 in 2011, so that shows that service providers and organizations are getting more and more aware. 
http://www.afrinic.net/index.php/en/statistics/ipv6-resources
But of course allocation is one thing and advertisement is an other but based on the routing tables 
The percentage of African ASNs that advertise IPv6  has jumped from 5.5% early 2010 to 12.12% early 2012 more than a 200% increase, so people are also deploying it on their routers 
http://v6asns.ripe.net/v/6?s=_RIR_AfriNIC, @ SM feel free to see country by country, including MU on the level of IPv6 uptake 
http://airrs.afrinic.net/bgp/
so what is left pushing it out to customers, well again what you do on your network is your prerogative, and no one can tell you what you should or should not do, however for those that are interested and don't know how to there is a lot more communications on the matter in the region through AfriNIC's and other national and regional organizational efforts, to name a few
IPv6 webinars held but AfriNIC, ISOC and Orange on a monthly bases, there is one in french starting in a few minutes 
http://www.afrinic.net/index.php/en/ipv6-portal/webinars/708-ipv6-webminar     
@SM your comment about why Senegal has 0% uptake will be addressed at this webinar I personally forwarded your email to Moduo Sall the presenter from Sonatel. 
Africa operators day, were AFRINIC and ISOC had a full day dedicated to transition mechanism and peering and interconnection
IPv6 mailing lists and Task force, still in need for more participants to get the ball properly running     
www.af6tf.net
So all the mechanisms are there for us to start working and as MARK TINKA said ROME was not built in a day, but I am happy with the progress that is happening in the region.

Now to add some controversy to the discussion so that I don't seem like I am just advocating for the IPv6 stuff
For world IPv6 launch that is taking place in 2 days 
0 African operators have signed on 
and last I saw less than 10 content providers including AfriNIC signed up
even though I know for a fact that some ISPs and content providers qualify, but again signing up for the event is their choice and their choice alone, I am just happy that they are doing IPv6.

Also for those comfortable with the IPv4 space we have and that claim it will be the west's problem to fix there are people now talking about planning on turning IPv4 off, or finding models were they can start billing extra for IPv4 traffic that runs over an IPv6 enabled network 
I am not saying it will happen anytime soon, but again, see how fast the snowball effect of IPv6 since early 2010 has formed.
http://gcn.com/articles/2012/05/25/cybereye-world-ipv6-launch-day-keep-or-dump-ipv4.aspx
http://gcn.com/articles/2011/10/21/cybereye-va-ipv6-turn-off-ipv4.aspx

last but not least and sorry for the long email, I just joined the conversation a bit late 
for those looking for business cases I will quote some from Google's "Enterprise IPv6 deployment Experience Report", in the book they discuss why google went for v6
1) Innovation. The process of innovation forces us to experiment, take risks and most importantly create.
2) Dogfooding. Google engineers are constantly working on new products and features. Before publicly releasing them they try them out entirely  
3) They were running out of private RFC 1918 addresses. same as what happened on the global level. (now I personally know of two networks here in Africa that have similar issues and the only reason keeping them from going to real v6 or even real v4 is the misconception of NAT security, hopefully by the end of the year Mukom and his team can change their minds)
4) If you build it they will come. Google started its plans 3 to 4 years before global depletion just to be ready today to turn v6 on and leave it on.
Regards
Hisham   
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