UK Organization Set Up To Encourage IPv6 Adoption Closes

New submitter Sesostris III writes "In April 2010, with £20,000 of government money, 6uk was set up to encourage the adoption of the IPv6 protocol in the UK. In December 2012 the board resigned en-masse in protest at official indifference to its work. 'The biggest organization we needed to join 6UK was the government,' the former director, Philip Sheldrake, is quoted as saying. Without government support, 'there's no material incentive for any organization to go for IPv6.' Government interest can be gauged by the fact that no government website currently sat on an IPv6 address. The UK is among the nations that have done the least to move to IPv6, and lags behind other nations in adopting the new protocol. In contrast, governments like that in the U.S. are encouraging adoption of the new protocol by mandating IPv6 compliance in contracts."

Comments

The IP Class diviation was never honest anyway

[BirdParrot]

I come from an Asian country with mostly shared ip address space. The divitation was never honest. It was first-come-first-serve. Both US and UK have lots of ip addresses to use, and it's wrong. Asia has much larger population too! I don't expect any new change to it, but just stating the facts.

Re:The IP Class diviation was never honest anyway

[thue]

Asia got all the address it asked for, until the pool ran out. Unless the address sharing stated in the last year (after the IANA pool ran dry), it was your own choice to use shared IP space.

Re:The IP Class diviation was never honest anyway

[BirdParrot]

There's a large cultural difference. Many guys and girls on asia use web cafes. When they later get own connection theres not usually enough ip's. You're talking about billions of people. Not everyone is going to have their own ip address from that pool.

Re:The IP Class diviation was never honest anyway

[jiadran]

I am from Europe and I think that Asian countries have a huge advantage. You are forced to adopt IPv6, so while the rest of the world still hesitates and waits, you gain lots of experience and get plenty of people trained in a new technology that will eventually become essential. Once the rest of the world wakes up to the reality, you are ready. This actually worries me for my own country...

I don't really care

[xiando]

I've been using IPv6 for 8 years or so and I really don't care what other people do. The main value for me is that all boxen on the LAN have their own IPv6 IPs so I can ssh to them and scp stuff around. My websites all have IPv6 availability, but nobody uses that, so I see why people don't bother. But I personally think the benefits of having IPv6 on your own stuff makes learning and using it worth while.

UKs "new" Government Network is IPv4

[pacman on prozac]

The UK is currently in the process of developing & deploying a network for government agencies to use called the PSN (public services network). It's sort of a replacement for the GSI. It runs on IPv4, most likely using the DWP address space discussed here.

Pretty much all the UK telcos & several global network manufacturers are involved with the PSN so it's a real missed opportunity that they didn't go with IPv6 for it.

Re:Lasted A Lot Longer Than Expected

[Dogtanian]

They lasted a lot longer than I expected. £20,000 is a really small amount of money so for it to last over two years is impressive.

£20,000 isn't a "really" small amount of money. £20,000 is an absurdly small amount of money. :-O

I notice that the website describes it as "seed funding". Realistically, I'd have thought that £20,000 was very low even for that purpose. That would about cover the pay of a *single* person for *one* year at less than average UK wages. And that wouldn't leave anything over for expenses.

At any rate, I was going to comment something along the lines of...

April 2010 - Labour gives government support to new body 6uk.
May 2010 - Labour kicked out of power, David Cameron and his Etonian chums, er... the Conservatives come in to power. Somewhat indifferent to Labour-supported project. Hmm.

Re:No more IPv4 addresses for you!

[Anonymous Coward]

There are no more anyway.. RIPE ran out in September.

In the future ISPs and Government are going to have to go ipv6 or have everyone dealing with cgnat (which will be 'fun').