Managing Critical Internet Resources
The Internet plays a vital role in the economic and social development of Vanuatu. Appropriate and efficient management of the Internet infrastructure and resources is critical, and includes the internet infrastructure (root servers, exchange points, connections), IP addresses and domain names.
Telecommunications Radiocommunications and Broadcasting Regulator (TRBR) worked with the Vanuatu Government to establish the Vanuatu Internet Exchange Point (VIX). A VIX working group was established and meetings and discussions were facilitated by TRBR. A memorandum of understanding was signed on the 10th of December 2012 by the Government via OGCIO, Digicel Vanuatu Ltd, Can'l Vanuatu Ltd, SPIM and Telsat Vanuatu Ltd, to establish peering agreements and route their local traffic to the VIX instead of having to use costly international satellite links.
Benefits of the VIX include cost savings for ISPs by keeping local traffic within Vanuatu, faster speed with less latency for local traffic, generating a local internet economy through introduction to the market of new local content and service providers who depend on high speed and high capacity services.
The VIX is the first such exchange point in the Pacific Region and is a mark of successful industry cooperation in Vanuatu.
For more than 20 years the Internet has been based on Version 4 of the Internet Protocol (IPv4). IPv4 was designed to accommodate approximately four billion potential Internet addresses using 32-bits each, which seemed more than adequate back in the 1980s. As the Internet grew, blocks of Internet addresses were assigned to various organizations and countries. However, by 2000 about one-half of all potential Internet addresses were taken.
With the fast growth in the number of Internet devices, it looked as if IPv4 addresses would be exhausted. However, researchers and technologists in the Internet standards organizations anticipated this problem in the early 1990s and developed methods to extend the life of IPv4. Additionally, they initiated the development of the “next generation” of IP, an effort that led to the development and standardization of IPv6 (version 6 of the Internet Protocol).
An IPV6 training workshop was organised by Telecommunications Radiocommunications and Broadcasting Regulator (TRBR) and OGCIO in Vanuatu in 2012. Participants, mainly IT professionals and network administrators from business houses, Government, and telecom operators, attended and gained hands on experience in IV4 to IPV6 transition and in implementing IPV6 on their respective networks. The training workshop was conducted by APNIC.