Topic of study is to "talk about the technical issues of migrating from IPv4 to IPv6 and how can the smooth transition be done".

Instructions for completing the assessment:

Your report should be no longer than 2500 words (not includingreferences). Any text outside this limit will not be assessed.

Your report should show that you have taken the time to research and developyour arguments

Objectives

You should write a high quality form report that:
- Demonstrates your ability to research, analyse and describe issues linked to data communications and networks, including societal, economic and technical impacts.
- Shows that you are able to identify and use high quality and authoritative reference sources (e.g. IEEE, IET, other)

Topic
The following news item appeared on the BBC Technology news website on 22 May 2015.

UK sells off unused net addresses

The UK government has started selling off Internet addresses that it no longer uses. The first group of 150,000 addresses has been snapped up by a Norwegian firm called Altibox for about £600,000. The Addresses are becoming valuable because the net has almost outgrown the addressing scheme it adopted in the 1970s. If the UK government sells off all the surplus addresses it owns it could get up to £15m. However, some fear that as the addresses are shared out more widely, data could go astray.

The surplus addresses are part of a much bigger block of 16 million addresses given to the Department of Work and Pensions in 1993. Earlier this year, the DWP started a project to see how many of these IP addresses could be freed. An official report produced before the DWP began its investigation suggested that 70% of the massive block was used for the UK government's internal network, leaving about five million free for disposal. A government spokesman said: "Government periodically reviews all its assets to consider their financial value, including options to release income from those that are not used to their fullest potential. "The scope of the value of these assets is commercially sensitive and protected by standard legal confidentiality agreements."

Diverted data
The addresses are known as IP Version 4 (IPv4) addresses and are valuable because of a hard limit in the numbering system they use. This caps the total number of IPv4 addresses at 4.3 billion. In practice there are fewer available because some are reserved for other uses. The net is in the process of moving to IP Version 6 (IPv6), which has an almost inexhaustible supply of addresses. However, technical incompatibilities between the two versions means many firms are seeking to expand their existing IPv4 networks instead of switching.

Regional caches of IPv4 addresses have all but run dry, meaning many firms have to look elsewhere for them, said Sandra Brown, president of address broker IPV4 Market Group. Trading in IPv4 had been brisk in Europe, said Ms Brown, because the organisation that oversees net addresses in the region had approved policies that allowed transfers. In the busiest months, about two million IPv4 addresses were being traded in Europe. "Supply has met demand but we are reaching a point where supply is about to fall short and we have seen prices escalate because of that," she said. Each individual IP address was worth up to $11 (£7), she said, but prices were lower when big deals were done.

Trading was likely to continue for years as firms were only slowly migrating to IPv6. "Most of the people I talk to say it will take five to 10 years to convert," said Ms Brown. That might spell trouble, said Doug Madory from network specialist Dyn, because there were concerns about what happened when that finite stock of addresses was divided very finely. "People typically try to deal with addresses in contiguous blocks to keep the binary math from getting unwieldy leading to errors," he said. "As you slice it thinly the number of routes gets larger and larger and it's computationally expensive to look up where each packet has to go." In addition, he said, delays in transferring ownership had already led to some data going astray. "We see this as a transition period," said Andrew de la Haye, chief operating officer of the Ripe agency that oversees net addresses in Europe. He added that some European companies were analysing how they use IPv4 as a way to help them move to the larger addressing system. "It's a bit early to say but I have spoken to a few of our members and they are freeing up IPv4 address spaces to fund their IPv6 migration," he said. "The longterm strategy should be IPv6." Ward (2015)

For your report...

You will carry out some research into the following areas:

1. Current technical issue (only one) and approaches in the transition to IPv6.

2. Are other governments taking a similar approach (focus on only one government)?

3. Have there been any updates since this article was published (focus on only one update)?

Use the results of your research to contribute to one specific topic area and one specific focus within that area. Add your views on social and economic effects of the issue or solution you choose to work on in your report. Justify the comments you make by using at least 1 quote from and citing your information sources and including a full reference to it using the IEEE style referencing standard. The reference list should becomprehensive. It should contain references to textbooks and reputable technical papers (e.g. from IEEE orIET) that have informed or guided your work. It must also demonstrate that you are able to use efficientlythe University's library resources. Do not rely on web pages and wikis as they are usually of poor or dubiousquality and may not be reliable. The list of references should NOT just be a bibliography (i.e. you will citefrom all the items in your list, relevant points).

You should:
- Avoid repetitions of ideas/concepts,
- Write efficiently and concisely,
- Avoid copying/pasting or scanning material (and figures). You must strictly apply the best practice in terms of copyright and suitably reference and attribute any work that is not your own.