Home » dia.ipv6.govt.nz

New Zealand Government Agencies and IPv6

This pilot website is part of an initial piece of work conducted by the Department of Internal Affairs, Government Technology Services into IPv6. The purpose is to demonstrate and show leadership on how NZ government web sites can be accessible to the IPv6 Internet.

In particular, we looked at what challenges or risks Government Agencies could face if they did nothing about IPv6. A key business risk identified by DIA is by doing nothing, users of New Zealand Government websites both national and international, would eventually be at risk of not being able to access government public websites.

IPv6.govt.nz has been built as "Dual Stack" which means we are allowing both IPv4 and IPv6 users to access this site natively.

What is IPv6?

The Internet predominately uses IPv4 addressing protocol to find and connect a web user to a web page. Due to the growth of the Internet it is expected there will not be enough IPv4 addressing and it is anticipated that unallocated IPv4 addressing will run out during 2011. IPv6 is the replacement protocol for the Internet which has virtually unlimited addressing.

What is Dual Stack?

Dual stack is where you add IPv6 to where you already have IPv4. This allows both IPv4 and IPv6 clients access to your websites natively i.e. without a transition mechanism such as tunnels, NAT, 6to4 etc.

It is anticipated that due to the global growth of mobile and Internet usage, there will eventually be IPv6 only users. If you IPv6 enable your web presence, all those users will still be able to access your on-line Internet services.