Eko-Konnect, AFRINIC Team up for IPv6 Migration

Eko-Konnect Research and Education Initiative in collaboration with the African Network Information Centre (AFRINIC) is joining hands on a training session on Internet Number Resource Management and IPv6 at  the University of Lagos.

The objective of this four-day session is to sensitise Internet operators, ISPs and other stakeholders on IPv6, the new Internet protocol. The event holds from September 11-14.

Eko-Konnect aims to coordinate and support network connectivity between the Education and Research Institutes in the Lagos area as part of wider efforts to establish ngREN, the national research and education network.

AFRINIC is the regional Internet registry in charge of the distribution of IP and ASN numbers in the African and Indian Ocean region.

IP addresses are critical Internet resources that allow devices to connect to the Internet.

Today the Internet has become a democratised medium and an essential tool, for more than 30 years Internet has been running on IPv4 addresses, resulting in their gradual exhaustion and obsoleteness.

It is thus crucial for Africa to migrate to IPv6, the pillar of tomorrow’s Internet. With the collaboration of AFRINIC, the Eko-Konnect Research and Education Initiative has organized this technical workshop to sensitize operators and ISPs and other organisations on IPv6 protocol usage.

Training is at the heart of AFRINIC activities and are free of charge. Since 2005, Afrinic has conducted over 100 sessions across Africa and trained over 1 000 engineers, both in francophone and Anglophone countries.

Prof Charles Uwadia, Eko-Konnect chairman said “With the depletion of IPv4 address reserves, it imperative that we support IPv6 as we rollout our networks and the time to start is now. As a research and education network, our role is to lead in data network technologies and support the free flow of information and knowledge. “

‘’Our Training programmes evolve and in line with our capacity-building strategy, one of our next objective is to set up an E-Learning Centre to reach a wider audience and further collaboration with Organisations bearing similar goals as AFRINIC’s training programme’’, said  AFRINIC’s CEO Adiel Akplogan.