Tag: IPv6

2023 ISIF Asia Grants now open for applications

ISIF Asia is now accepting applications for the 2023 funding cycle.

ISIF Asia empowers organizations across the Asia Pacific region to research, design, and implement Internet-based solutions to solve Internet development challenges that support community development and growth. Since 2008, ISIF Asia has supported 121 grants and 31 awards, allocating over USD 7.44 million to 152 innovative initiatives across 31 economies out of the 56 in the Asia Pacific region.

Applications are open to public and private sector organizations, academia, non-profits, and social enterprise organizations.

There are three thematic areas.

  • Inclusion: Initiatives that help ensure everyone has meaningful access to the Internet, online applications and services
  • Infrastructure: Initiatives to increase Internet speed, reduce maintenance and operational costs, and improve reliability and/or security
  • Knowledge: Initiatives that develop technical capacity and/or research around Internet network operations for technical and non-technical audiences

Within these three program areas, there are additional types of grant.

  • Ian Peter Grants for Internet and the Environment

The Ian Peter Grants for Internet and the Environment can be across any of the three program areas and are to support innovative solutions to the environmental impact of the Internet. They commemorate the life and work of Ian Peter, Internet pioneer and environmental activist.

  • IPv6 Deployment Grants

ISIF Asia’s IPv6 Deployment Grants are also open for organizations planning to deploy IPv6 in the Asia Pacific. IPv6 Deployment Grants range between USD 30,000 and USD 250,000. These are open all year round and are part of the Infrastructure program.

In addition, three small grants (USD 30,000 each) will be made available across any program area to economies that have not previously received ISIF Asia grants. A full list of economies that ISIF Asia has supported is available here.

Applications are open now until 30 April 2023 at 11:59 AM (UTC +10). For application and selection criteria please familiarize yourself with the APNIC Foundation Portal, where you will be able to submit your application.

Please note that first time applicants will need to create an account. Please ensure you have entered accurate information (including the email address) when completing the registration form. Once you have completed the registration form, you will receive an email notification from the APNIC Foundation with login information, which will give you access to the portal and our application forms.

2022 IPv6 Deployment grant recipients announced

The APNIC Foundation is pleased to announce its inaugural round of ISIF Asia IPv6 Deployment grant recipients to be supported as part of our Infrastructure program. These four organizations are strong ambassadors for IPv6 deployment in the Asia Pacific.

We look forward to sharing updates as they make progress with deployments, and we hope to see more organizations adopting IPv6 and following in their footsteps in years to come!

  • BOOM! Inc., Micronesia: USD 250,000
  • Tonga Communication Corporation, Tonga: USD 250,000
  • National Institute of Technology Karnataka, Surathkal, India: USD 240,000
  • Yayasan Badan Wakaf Universitas Islam Indonesia, Indonesia: USD 60,000

The projects by BOOM! Inc. and Tonga Communication Corporation both have a strong focus on building local expertise and using their deployment experience to empower others in the Pacific to be more self-sufficient in developing and maintaining their network infrastructure.

The projects led by National Institute of Technology Karnataka (in partnership with India Internet Engineering Society – IIESoc) and Universitas Islam Indonesia (in partnership with the Indonesia Network Information Centre – IDNIC), will focus on deployment in the academic sector, including training for students and early-career engineers as part of their projects.

Plans are underway for offering continuing support for IPv6 deployment in 2023. Please check our website early next year to see how you can apply!

Report available! IPv6 deployment at enterprises

IPv6 adoption at large, brick-and-mortar enterprises has lagged. Many feel that unless this issue is addressed, the Internet as a whole will stall at an IPv6 adoption rate of about 60%. The India Internet Engineering Society (https://www.iiesoc.in/), a nonprofit based in India, would like to begin to address this issue.

There are many subsidiaries of large corporations in India. Such organizations, primarily use IPv4 addresses. For example, one of the largest mobile providers in India, whose backbone is IPv6, has had to purchase IPv4 addresses on the open market simply to support these corporations. The decision to move to IPv6 is made at the headquarters of these companies – which is often in the United States. The US federal government has recently announced a direction for IPv6-only for the US government. This makes it the right time for this project.

IIESoc proposes to work collaboratively with a nonprofit industry consortium in the United States, the Industry Network Technology Council (INTC), to address the issue of IPv6 adoption in large brick-and-mortar enterprises. INTC has done a survey of large enterprises and has found that security, application conversion and training are three of the biggest challenges enterprises have as far as IPv6 adoption. We need to find out exactly what these challenges entail. To that end, we need to have brick-and-mortar enterprises involved. This is an issue because such enterprises do not participate actively in Internet standards bodies. They do participate to some extent in network operations groups. Outreach to these organizations will be a key part of this project.

We propose three phases with their corresponding goals. (Subsequent phases may be proposed at the conclusion of phase 3).

Phase 1: IPv6 training and migration discussions for enterprises. Goal: Establish IIESoc as a leader in IPv6 space, create visibility for the project, start to create a core group of enterprises.

Phase 2: Create a consortium of academia, industry, and government. Goal: Prepare for phase 3 which will create security and application inventory.

Phase 3: Create an inventory of application and security challenges in concert with the consortium. Goal: Start to create a methodology to handle the hardest issues in IPv6 conversion.

Phase 1 is the necessary precursor and foundation for enterprises to be able to have conversations about what is to be done for IPv6 migration. If they do not receive training and have a forum for discussion of migration issues, the other phases will not be successful. In this application, we only asked for funding for Phase 1 which lasted 12 months.

The following webinars have been completed as a part of Phase 1 activity:

Introduction to IPv6: Feb 4, 2021

Lab: IPv6 basics: Feb 11, 2021

​Neighbour Discovery: March 4, 2021

Lab: Neighbor Discovery: March 18, 2021

IPv6 Address Planning: April 8, 2021

Lab: IPv6 Address Planning: April 15, 2021

IPv6 Transition Mechanisms: May 6, 2021

Lab: IPv6 Transition Mechanisms: May 13, 2021

DHCPv6: June 3, 2021

Lab: DHCPv6: June 10, 2021

IPv6 and Cloud: June 17, 2021

Lab: IPv6 and Cloud: June 24, 2021

​Introduction to IPv6 Security July 8, 2021

An addition to the project also included the travel to in-person IETF 113 by one student.

The final report is available here.