The 6UK board has determined that the organisation cannot fulfil its purpose and therefore the directors, all volunteers, resigned at today’s AGM without seeking re-election. In the absence of nominations to the board, 6UK is to be wound up in accordance with its articles of association.
BBC technology news 7 Nov 12 article, updated 8 Nov 12
6UK is a not-for-profit membership organisation founded with seed funding of £20k from BIS in April 2010 to help the UK and UK organisations secure every competitive advantage available from the rapid adoption of the new protocol.
The UK lags its neighbours, economies of similar size, G20 and EU member states when it comes to uptake of the new Internet protocol, IPv6. This is of growing concern because the RIPE NCC (the Regional Internet Registry for Europe, the Middle East and parts of Central Asia) began to allocate its very last address space of the previous protocol, IPv4, in September this year.
Many factors impact the uptake of IPv6 and clearly free-market incentives are insufficient. Yet at a country level, delayed adoption significantly impacts national competitiveness, innovation and skills deleteriously. It may also hobble UK based companies facility to compete internationally.
From observing global IPv6 adoption patterns in recent times, one factor appears to dominate IPv6 adoption rates, namely government support. Countries with hands-off governments fall behind.
Additional information
The Internet equivalent of a telephone number is known as an Internet Protocol address, or IP address for short. Just as you need someone’s telephone number to call him or her, network technology needs an address when instructed to dispatch a packet of data from one computer to another.
Today, the Internet mostly uses IP version 4 (IPv4) but this has now reached the limits of its capacity. IANA – the Internet Assigned Numbers Authority – issued the last IPv4 address to the Regional Internet Registries in February 2011.
Internet Protocol version 6 (IPv6) is the next generation protocol that provides vastly expanded address space, allowing the Internet to grow to many billions of times its current size.
Every organisation must consider the implications of the need to transition to IPv6 and decide what action it needs to take. Fortunately, having been defined towards the end of the 1990s, IPv6 is a well understood and low risk protocol.
Useful resources
An executive briefing and project planning guide are available at: http://www.6uk.org.uk/
For general information about 6UK, please visit: http://www.6uk.org.uk
Note: The 6UK website will continue serving until end-December.
For general information from the RIPE NCC: http://www.ipv6actnow.org
RIPE NCC on IPv4 exhaustion: http://www.ripe.net/internet-
For analyses at RIPE LABS: https://labs.ripe.net/
For country statistics by Cisco: http://6lab.cisco.com/stats/
Recent article about US government efforts: http://www.pcadvisor.co.uk/new
The IPv6 Forum:http://www.ipv6forum.com
The IPv6 Observatory: http://www.ipv6observatory.eu
Contact details
Philip Sheldrake – 07715 488 759
Nigel Titley – 07956 619 345
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