The Indian government decided to shift all its websites to the new Internet Protocol, IPv6, by the year-end, as per the statement by communications and information technology ministry. It was to be executed by March 2012 which is still lagging behind and the ministry plans to run out of IPv4 shortly and bring IPv6 into force.

"As IPv6 is not backward compatible with IPv4, the transition to IPv6 is likely to be a complex, mammoth and long-term exercise during which both IPv4 and IPv6 will co-exist," says the ministry. Quite recently, many government websites became the victims of cyber crimes, and the losses due to this has been very large. This has increased the concern over the security of the data and pushed the government to adapt more secure methods to protect their data.

The country sees a large number of consumers connected to the web through various devices. Thus, it may hamper the growth of the internet sector with a lack of new addresses which can provide useful information to consumers across the globe. Moreover there is a strong requirement to provide security to the users through their IP address.

Currently India has 35 million IPv4 addresses against a user base of about 360 million. According to a data search by Google, IPv6 adoption is the highest in France, Romania and the U.S. In India, adoption is still on a snail's pace of 0.04 percent. There is support from most of the service providers, but the official announcement is yet to be made.

The chief executive of National Internet Exchange of India (NIXI), Govind, says that a task force has been specially arranged to set up the IPv6 comprising of various stake holders like the Internet Service Providers in India as well as the government departments. He says that training has been provided to install IPv6 to skilled engineers.