Ghana must adopt Internet Protocol Version Six – Akumiah

Mr Eric Akumiah, a member of the National Computer Emergency Response Team, on Monday urged government to ensure that the country adopted the Internet Protocol Version Six (IPv6).

He explained that the IPv6, which was the latest version of the internet protocol provided an identification and location system for computers on networks and routes traffic across the internet, and more technical benefits in addition to a larger addressing space.

Mr Akumiah made the remarks in his presentation titled: “Strengthening Our Critical National Internet Infrastructure,” in Accra at the Third Ghana Internet Governance Forum (IGF).

The forum on: “Ensuring Freedom, Security and growth in Our Digital World,” was sponsored by the National Communications Authority, IGF, Support Association and the Internet Society.

Mr Akumiah said with the depletion of the Internet Protocol Version Four (IPv4) Critical Numbers Resources worldwide; there was the need for the country to adopt the IPv6 number system.

He explained that this called for a migration plan, capacity building, equipment compliance enforcement, and the need to have a National Task Force in place.

He observed that in order to make such a task force effective, it must be spearheaded by the Ministry of Communications (MOC) and the National Information Technology Agency (NITA).

Mr Akumiah disclosed that a new automated .gh rpt .gh registry would soon be commissioned to make .gh domain names widely available.

He said the government had set up a primary data centre in Accra sitauted in the new NITA-MOC Building near Advance Information Technology Institute- Kofi Annan Centre of Excellence (AITI KACE).

He said the facility had over 500 Racks and up two Pentabyte storage capacity and sits on 10GBps fiber ring around the heart of Accra.

He said a secondary data centre was in Kumasi, which was connected to primary via high speed Fibre Optics cables; operate actively with the primary data centre.

Mr Akumiah pointed out that as part of efforts to secure data in the country, a disaster recovery data centre had being located in Tamale to be connected to both the primary and secondary via high speed fibre optics.

He said the primarily data centre would store all government data securely and that plans were underway for lease of excess capacity to private sector for data centre and data recovery services.