AFRINIC’s training team was again front and center at the African Internet Summit’s workshop week, delivering a number of technical workshops, including on IPv6.

AFRINIC’s IPv6 Training courses are IPv6 Forum Certified (Gold) and aim to equip network engineers and operators with knowledge about IPv6 deployment and transition techniques including how to: conduct an IPv6 infrastructure audit, create an address plan, acquire IPv6 prefixes, configure routing, and choosing transition

To understand the motivation for attendees to participate in this workshop and where their organisations are at in terms deploying IPv6, we chatted with four attending engineers from host country Botswana as well Malawi, Uganda and Zimbabwe.

Daurice Nyirongo, Network Engineer for Lilongwe University of Agriculture and Natural Resources Malawi.

We’re currently using IPv4 but we’re intending to deploy IPv6 as soon as possible. We’ve recently upgraded our infrastructure – we have a new fiber installation – and now we are trying to develop our team’s understanding of IPv6, which is why I’m here at AIS 2016 and attending these IPv6 workshops. The world of the Internet is changing. IPv4 is being depleted in our regions and they are starting to deploy IPv6 more and more. I think it’s important that we make the change with them, so we are on par and easily access the Internet in the future. The major challenge is to make others understand. What I’ve learnt so far is as long as we plan, and train our teams, it should be easy to deploy it.

Raziul Hasan, Manager at Mega Internet, an ISP based in Botswana.

We are currently testing IPv6 to prepare for future deployment. From our tests so far we have found that no websites in Botswana support IPv6. Because of this, if we do deploy IPv6 we will most likely deploy it in dual stack instead of IPv6-only. We have our IPv6. I’ve come along to this workshop to learn more about IPv6.

Sisa Sibanda, Network Technician at Lupane State University, Zimbabwe.

I wouldn’t say IPv6 is a new phenomenon for us. We have an allocation and had some training. I’d say building capacity among technicians is a challenge. Secondly, in terms of the equipment, we have challenges to getting and installing appropriate Since we are a young institution, we have challenges with funding, particularly for ICT investment. To have proper equipment, it is really difficult.

Christopher Balamaga, Core IP Network Engineer at Liquid Telecom, Uganda

IPv6 is important because we have run out of IPv4. Yes, we have more IPv4 in Africa compared to other regions but it is a matter of time. Also we have to remember that the Internet is a global thing; Africa does not have its own Internet. So if the global have moved on to IPv6, then it is imperative that we also move with them so we I’m attending this workshop to understand how IPv6 works, how to deploy it, and how to manage it. I think undertaking this sort of training is a prerequisite for the Following this workshop we will start using and testing IPv6 within our organisation. This step will help our employees get a good understanding of it, which will help with promoting it too and troubleshooting with our customers. The major challenge about deploying IPv6 is awareness. Even people in the industry are reluctant to using IPv6 because I think they don’t know what it is, or it’s too complicated - when they look at the address space and how long it is compared to IPv4 they see it as too difficult and run away from it. So, if we make our employees and our clients know what ipv6 is and why it is needed, I think it will be picked up.