BANGKOK, June 5 – Thailand’s Internet Protocol (IP) will be changed from version 4 (IPv4) to the latest version 6 (IPv6) to deal with IP address exhaustion in the near future, according to a cabinet resolution yesterday.
The Information and Communication Technology (ICT) Ministry informed the cabinet that IPv4, which currently carries the vast majority of Internet traffic allows only 4 billion addresses, but the need has arisen for more addresses than IPv4 can accommodate.
Every device on the Internet must be assigned an IP address to communicate with other devices.
IPv6 offers much larger address space and the length of an IPv6 address is 128 bits, compared with 32 bits in IPv4.
The ICT Ministry explained that IPv6 will support Long Term Evolution (LTE) service for 3G and 4G high-speed data for mobile phones and data terminals and new applications in the future.
The replacement to IPv6 starts this year and will take three years, but private Internet service providers should have their wireless systems connected to IPv6 by December next year.
At least 10,000 government agencies, institutes and schools should be provided with IPv6 by December 2015. (MCOT online news)
