IPv6 Adoption in South Africa: Barriers, Benefits and Government Intervention

The number of IPv4 address blocks continues to plummet due to the explosion in the number of devices connected to the Internet, coupled with the advent of new unprecedented technological advances such as 5G, Internet of Things (IoT) and smart cities. Notably, South Africa is projected to run out of IPv4 addresses by 2021. This has created a need for a robust communication protocol to solve the shortage of IPv4 addresses and enable further expansion of the Internet. IPv6 has been preached as the silver bullet solution to solve this problem. To ensure a smooth transition to IPv4, IPv6 intends to supplement IPv4 through dual-stacking (which enables coexistence of both IPv4 and IPv6), and to eventually replace IPv4. To date, virtually all major content providers have implemented IPv6 in dual-stack mode to accommodate countries that are lagging behind the IPv6 curve. However, given the complexity and cost of maintaining dual-stack operations, most content providers are now taking steps to turn IPv4 off and exclusively run IPv6 on their networks. Alarmingly, the adoption of IPv6 in South Africa is substantially below the global average. This is a serious concern since devices using IPv4 will eventually only be able to access old legacy content. Moreover, the poor IPv6 adoption in South Africa will potentially threaten participation in emerging technologies such as the fourth industrial revolution, which has emerged as an important vehicle to positive socioeconomic change. This paper presents possible IPv4 address shortage mitigation strategies that Internet service providers can implement. The paper also presents benefits and key inhibitors to IPv6 adoption as well as regulatory interventions that can be implemented to foster adoption of IPv6.