Australia is one of the countries leading the way in IPv6 adoption, according to an Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) report which calls for more network operators to follow its lead as IPv4 is running out.

“The growth in broadband subscriptions has helped fuel the expansion of the Internet and also been one of its growing pains. This growth in the number of networks and devices attached to those networks has led to a shortage of unique Internet addresses used to identify individual devices connected to the Internet,” states the report.

“As a result, there is a need for all network operators to upgrade to a new Internet scheme, Internet protocol version 6 (IPv6).”

The report states that, based on current trends, experts estimate that IPv4 addresses will run out in 2011 or early 2012.

By the end of 2008, OECD countries owned 2.2 billion out of 2.7 billion IPv4 addresses allocated worldwide. Australia is in the top five countries in terms of yearly growth of allocated IPv4 addresses between 1998 and 2008, with just under 30 per cent growth. By contrast, Switzerland at the other end of the scale experienced a 10 per cent decrease in IPv4 addresses.

Australia is in the top five countries in terms of number of allocated Ipv6 addresses distributed, along with the US, Germany, France and Japan.

“Australia has taken a lead in deploying IPv6 networks. The Australian Governmnet Information Management Office has a revised strategy for the transition to IPv6 which will see the Australian Government agencies being IPv6-capable by the end of 2012,” states the report.

Australia allocated 54 IPv6 prefixes in 2008, up from 15 in 2008. The only country that added more Ipv6 addresses last year was the US, which allocated 221 IPv6 addresses. A total 1004 IPv6 addresses were added in the world in 2008, according to the report.