The Department of Telecommunications (DoT) has fixed December 31, 2022 as the deadline for internet service providers to customise their network as well as change modem and routers at customer premise for services to the internet protocol address, IPv6. Further, government organisations have been mandated to complete the transition to IPv6 latest by June 30, 2022.
As per a note issued by the DoT, all new retail wireline customer connections provided by service providers after December 31, 2022 would be capable of carrying IPv6 traffic either on dual stack on native IPv6.
At present, India has around 50 per cent share in IPv6 addresses globally. The shift to IPv6 will help in growth of internet usage especially in the context of work from home as well as internet of thing (IoT) ecosystem and upcoming 5G services.
Earlier, the DoT had set a deadline of December 2017 for government organisations to switch their systems to IPv6, changing the customer premise equipment (CPEs) complaint with IPv6 by December, 2017 and shifting of websites to IPv6 complaint servers by January, 2017.
