Next Mon­day, rep­re­sen­ta­tives of the In­ter­net Ad­dress Reg­istry for Latin Amer­i­ca and the Caribbean (Lac­nic) will be­gin a se­ries of vis­its and meet­ings with T&T of­fi­cials and op­er­a­tors to re­port on the im­pend­ing ex­haus­tion of the re­gion­al IPv4 ad­dress stock and dis­cuss ac­tions that should be tak­en to en­sure nor­mal In­ter­net growth.

IP ad­dress­es are a fi­nite yet vi­tal re­source for the prop­er op­er­a­tion of the In­ter­net, and this year will bring sig­nif­i­cant chal­lenges re­sult­ing main­ly from en­ter­ing a new phase where IP ver­sion 4 (IPv4) ad­dress avail­abil­i­ty will be in­creas­ing­ly re­duced.To make the tran­si­tion as smooth as pos­si­ble and en­sure con­tin­ued In­ter­net growth through a safe and sta­ble tran­si­tion to In­ter­net Pro­to­col ver­sion 6 (IPv6) through­out the re­gion, this new phase re­quires ac­tive par­tic­i­pa­tion of all stake­hold­ers.

Ernesto Maj�, com­mu­ni­ca­tions and ex­ter­nal re­la­tions man­ag­er, and Car­los Mart�nez Cagnaz­zo, chief tech­nol­o­gy of­fi­cer, will vis­it gov­ern­ment agen­cies and In­ter­net ser­vice providers in T&T to raise aware­ness about the im­mi­nent ex­haus­tion of IPv4 and the need to de­ploy IPv6.More than six out of ten In­ter­net or­gan­i­sa­tions in the Lac­nic ser­vice re­gion have al­ready re­ceived at least one IPv6 ad­dress block, the new tech­nol­o­gy that now is re­plac­ing the IPv4 pro­to­col.

Ac­cord­ing to Lac­nic's tech­ni­cal records, Brazil leads the rank­ing of coun­tries with the most IPv6 as­sign­ments, fol­lowed by Ar­genti­na, Colom­bia, Mex­i­co, Chile, Cos­ta Ri­ca, and Ecuador.To­day, more than five out of ten Latin Amer­i­cans have In­ter­net ac­cess, and this num­ber is ex­pect­ed to grow over the next 30 months.It is es­ti­mat­ed that by 2015 there will be 100 mil­lion new In­ter­net users in Latin Amer­i­ca and the Caribbean, to­tal­ing 355 mil­lion users.