There might be no more "Internet" in Nigeria soon

Cry Face: The Internet is about to finish in Nigeria?

Unless urgent infrastructural and devices upgrades are carried out soonest, the country’s internet space may be shut down denying Nigerians access to the information superhighway because her Internet protocol (IP) is legacy.

In simple words, the internet protocol 4 (IPv4) on which most connectivity in Nigeria are channeled through is on the verge of extinction.

The Internet Protocol (IP), according to experts, is the principal communications modus operandi in the Internet protocol suite for relaying datagram across network circuits. Its routing function enables internetworking, and essentially establishes the Internet.

IP, as the primary protocol, Wikipedia writes, in the Internet layer of the Internet protocol suite, has the task of delivering packets from the source host to the destination host solely based on the IP addresses.

Engineer Otunte Otueneh, chapter officer, Internet Society Nigeria Chapter, told Nigeria CommunicationsWeek during that the IPv4 is almost finished, warning that, “by the time the IPv4 finishes most PC cannot be connected to the internet”.

Otueneh, who spoke at the sidelines of the IPV6 roundtable organised by DigitalSENSE Africa Media said that “we need to create awareness to tell Nigerians especially that version 4 is almost finished and we need to move on to the new version”

The exhaustion of the IPv4 pool and the inevitable transition to IPv6 has been the talk of many national and international meetings, particularly during a Sociétés de l’Information dedicated to the AfNOG, AfriNIC and INET meetings held in Abuja at the beginning of May 2007.

With IPv4 exhaustion looming and IPv6 taking a slow start, debate heated up at the conference. NCW