Malaysian Government To Fully Adopt IPV6 By End Of 2012

AYOADE ABEEL July 19

-- The Malaysian government is poised to fully adopt the Internet Protocol version 6 or IPv6 by the end of next year and may emerge as the first government in the world to achieve full IPv6 compliance, Deputy Information Communication and Culture Minister Datuk Joseph Salang said.

Salang said several government agencies had already adopted the IPv6 while several others were in the process of shifting from IPv4.

"The government encourages not only its agencies and departments to adopt the IPv6 but also industry players who are still using the IPv4.

"The IPv6 is more secure and has a much wider capacity and nearly inexhaustible compared to the IPv4," he told reporters after opening the 2011 Regional IPv6 Conference, here Tuesday.

He hoped that the country's key industry players would fully adopt the new Internet protocol by next year to facilitate communications with their clients in view of the diminishing use of the IPv4.

He said that those who refused to move to IPv6 might suffer losses in the long term due to communications problem with those who had already adopted the new protocol.

"Generally, there has been reluctance among industry players to move to IPv6 due to cost...they are looking at the cost, not at the opportunity cost," he said.

Meanwhile, Chair of Asia Pacific IPv6 Task Force, Dr Sureswaran Ramadass, commended Malaysia, saying the country had been one of the pioneers in the IPv6 movement.

Universiti Sains Malaysia, through the National Advanced IPv6 Centre, was playing a key role in training IPv6 network engineers throughout the world, he said.

Sureswaran, who is also the National Advanced IPv6 Centre director, said to date, about 3,000 engineers had been trained in Malaysia on IPv6.

Of the total, about 1,000 were Malaysians, he said.

Ayoade Abeel