Commission calls for movement on Internet Protocol
Key research facilities and the competitiveness of Europe's wireless technologies could be compromised if sufficient action is not taken to ensure the timely availability of the next generation of Internet Protocol (version 6, or IPv6). This was the stark warning issued by the first meeting of the industry-led task force hosted by the European Commission on 24 April, which had been called for at the Stockholm summit. The urgency of the issue was emphasised by the news that the current Internet Protocol will run out of Internet addresses by 2005 if current growth rates persist. Speaking at the meeting, European Commissioner for Enterprise and information society, Erkki Liikanen, said: 'The rapid and continued growth of the Internet as the key infrastructure of the global knowledge economy now requires new policy measures to ensure that it can continue to meet new requirements. Europe in particular must act quickly if the constraints of the existing Internet Protocols are not to hold back realisation of the Lisbon strategy objectives.' The meeting also addressed the issues that directly relate to European research in this area. These included strengthening the IPv6 research and development activities of the IST (information society technologies) programme of the European Union's Fifth Framework programme and the proposals contained in the Sixth Framework programme (FP6). This could particularly focus on the areas such as system interoperability and inter-working. The meeting also highlighted the need to convert European research and education networks to IPv6 by 2003 to 2004. This includes not just the national research and development networks, but also the European backbone, GEANT. The task force will continue meeting until December 2001, but will be carrying out other work over the Internet.