EU teams with Korea on IPv6 development

According to a statement from Korea's Ministry of Information and Communication, the agreement was sealed at an international IPv6 conference in Brussels, Belgium last week.

Global momentum is steadily growing for IPv6 but these efforts have mostly been region-specific. This announcement marks one of the first few cross-continent collaborations to promote the new standard, seen the much-needed successor to the current IPv4 Net address protocol.

The move to is driven largely by fear that the existing Internet address pool, particularly in Asia and Europe, could run dry within a few years as PCs and Web-enabled devices continue to proliferate. IPv6 promises to alleviate this shortage by increasing the Web address space from 32 bits to 128 bits, allowing a much larger number of gadgets to be online.

In Asia, South Korea, Japan and China have emerged as the strongest proponents of the new technology, backed by domestic network equipment manufacturers and bodies such as the IPv6 Forum.

The trio last month announced plans to cooperate on IPv6 development, an initiative which is expected to involve dozens of companies including Nippon Telegraph, Samsung, SK Telecom and China Telecommunications.

Besides regional technology firms, global heavyweights like 3Com, Cisco Systems and AT&T too have thrown their weight behind the new standard.

Despite recent strides, some industry bodies feel the problems associated with current IPv4 standard have been overstated, mostly for commercial and political reasons.

Paul Wilson, director general of regional Internet registry APNIC, told CNETAsia in a previous interview that doomsday prophecies on the looming shortage of Web addresses should be met with some scepticism.

Based on the current consumption pattern, he said it will take one to two decades before the current IPv4 address system runs out.

Wilson added there are good reasons to adopt IPv6 worldwide but he hoped there would be less lobbying from parties with a vested interest in pushing rapid adoption of the new technology.