CITC Begins Providing Its Internet Services via Internet Protocol Version 6 (IPv6)

The Communications and Information Technology Commission has completed preparing the infrastructure to provide its internet services via Internet Protocol version 6 (IPv6), making it the first government entity to provide its services through this protocol with its own independent addresses. It is now possible for Internet Protocol version 6 (IPv6) users to access and benefit from the internet services provided by the Commission, which include the service of registering domain names under the international top-level domain (sa.) designated for the Kingdom, as well as internet site filtering services.

This step comes as part of the Commission's preparations to prepare all its services provided over the internet in a manner compatible with Internet Protocol version 6 (IPv6), which will support the continued use of the World Wide Web for decades to come and the expansion of benefiting from various internet applications. The importance of transitioning to version 6 lies in overcoming the limited capacity problem of the currently used version 4 (IPv4), which is approaching depletion, compared to what the new internet protocol version offers in terms of a huge number of addresses and other additional features compared to the current protocol.

It is noted that the latest statistics and forecasts issued by the Internet Assigned Numbers Authority (IANA) indicated that the remaining percentage of internet addresses for the current version (IPv4) does not exceed only 8% of all internet addresses, and that all these addresses are expected to be depleted by the end of 2011.

More information about the new protocol and the Kingdom's efforts in this field can be obtained through the website (www.ipv6.org.sa).