Exporters may need to migrate to IPv6 to keep trading: Taskforce

Computerworld partners with IPv6 Taskforce to hold Auckland workshops on the critical tech migration

IPv6 taskforce member and former REANNZ CEO Donald Clark says the majority of countries that New Zealand trades with are looking at compulsory adoption of the next-generation Internet Protocol.

“Currently around 74 percent of New Zealand's export trade value is with countries whose governments are pursuing some form of mandated adoption to IPv6,” he says of the new generation of internet protocol.

“Companies wanting to do business with these countries will need to be able to talk IPv6. Companies wanting to serve customers in these countries will need to be able to talk IPv6.”

The IPv6 taskforce and InternetNZ are partnering with Computerworld to run an event with a series of “how to” workshops on IPv6 migration in Auckland on May 23. The taskforce recently held a similar event in Wellington for government departments.

“The Auckland event is all about businesses. It is about sharing the fact that IPv6 is not an optional consideration, but that it can be pragmatically introduced and tackled with little additional cost,” says Clark.

Among the speakers at the Auckland event are Beca CIO Robin Johansen and Trade Me head of infrastructure Matt van Deventer who will be sharing their experiences of migrating to IPv6. There will also be workshop streams on security, technical implementation and business processes.

So what does Clark say to those businesses that have stockpiled IPv4 addresses and are delaying the migration to IPv6?

“Sadly, the rest of the world hasn't - and they will be moving to adopt IPv6. Feel free to run IPv4 on your internal networks for as long as wish, but if you want to remain a part of the internet you will need to also run IPv6.”

For example Akamai, which carries between 20 and 30 percent of the internet’s web traffic, this month began offering its entire customer base IPv6 services.