The Postal and Telecommunications Regulatory Authority of Zimbabwe (POTRAZ) has completed setting up a regional Internet Protocol Version 6 (IPv6) Testbed.
The Internet Protocol version 6 (IPv6) is a successor to the IPv4 the currently prevalent version of the Internet Protocol. IPv6 promises improvements over IPv4 in many ways namely the Quality-of-Service (QoS), security, mobility, auto-configuration and addressing.
Internet Protocol (IP) has emerged as the most popular communication protocol in today’s world. With the original scope of delivering Data packets, IP has evolved tremendously over the period and is now being utilized to offer "triple play bundled" services by telecommunication operators.
With the advent of new enriched applications and services, a rapid adoption of IP‐ based platforms (especially the Internet) is being observed. The situation is resulting in massive allocation of IPv4 (the present version of Internet Protocol) addresses and as a result reduce address space unique public IP addresses. To overcome this alarming situation, IETF (Internet Engineering Task Force) defined the next generation version of Internet Protocol (IPv6) in 1998.
In view of growing importance of Internet Protocol for smooth presence of global communication, countries have started necessary work on transition of IPv6.
In a statement, Potraz said, "The Postal and Telecommunications Regulatory Authority of Zimbabwe (POTRAZ) has completed setting up a regional Internet Protocol Version 6 (IPv6) Testbed. The testbed, which was set up with assistance from the International Telecommunication Union (ITU), is open to all Administrations, entities and individuals in the SADC Region, who would want to test, learn and troubleshoot IPv6 Configurations and Applications on actual IPv6 networking equipment. "
