September 27, 2010
Research done by SIG shows that 1 in 12 information systems will cease working with the imminent deployment of version 6 of the Internet Protocol. The research looked at 132 systems currently operational in Western Europe. On average per system, € 2.4 million has been invested to build or procure these systems.

The current version of the Internet Protocol (version 4, from 1981) can connect a limited number of about 4 billion "computers". Because of the explosive growth of the number of devices that connect to the internet (phones, televisions, printers, cameras) this limit is about to be reached. The current estimate is that the last device can be connected on January 18, 2012. The new version of the Internet Protocol (version 6) can connect a practically unlimited number of devices, which solves the problem.

"All our clients are working on projects to migrate to the next version of the Internet Protocol. These projects focus on hardware and software necessary to run the network. Our research shows that 1 in 12 information systems, contrary to common expectation, will stop working after the migration to the new protocol," says Tobias Kuipers, CTO of SIG. "These are systems that are not part of the migration projects, because common understanding is that they will just keep working. These systems need to be modified to work with the new protocol. If the modification is done in a timely fashion, it is relatively minor. If organisations only find out the system stops working when testing the migration project, then they need to start an unscheduled repair project. This can run up to € 1 million per system, depending on the necessary urgency".

"In general, information systems have no knowledge of the specific version of the Internet Protocol being used, just like electrical appliances do not care how the electricity they use is transported to the power socket," says Joost Visser, head of R&D at SIG. "We have now learnt that 1 in 12 systems uses specific parts of the protocol that no longer exist in version 6. Fortunately, these systems do not strictly need to use these parts. Therefor, it is reasonably simple to rewrite the software in such a way that it no longer cares what version of the protocol is used".

Via de following link you can download the report:
www.sig.eu/en/IPv4-dependency