By Clifford Agugoesi, Editor-in-Chief

Qualified engineers from any country in Africa who run a network and believe they can make one concrete visible step towards IPv6 deployment or advance their stalled IPv6 deployment, are welcome to apply  for a spot in the third edition of the  AFRINIC IPv6 & RPKI E-Deployathon 2021.

Slated for between July 27-29,  2021, over Zoom from 9:00 to 13:00 UTC – 4 hours each day, the e-Deployathon promises to be fun-filled, according to the AFRINIC Team,  organisers of the event.

Language of delivery is English.

“If selected, you will get the same step-by-step guidance, tools, and techniques we have perfected in 9 (e-)Deployathons, and +100 helpdesk calls to help realise your IPv6 deployment project” the organisers promise.

Interested persons are to register following this link: https://afrinic.net/edeployathon

Only 35 spots  are available, according to the AFRINIC Team.  Deadline for application is July 19,  2021.

Here is why there is a fierce urgency for migration to IPv6.  AFRINIC is the only RIR with IPv4 addresses in its free pool — 1,780,480 million, to be specific.

“This, as you can tell, is grossly inadequate to meet Africa’s current IP address needs, making IPv6 the only sustainable way to continue to grow the potential of the Internet in Africa. In 2018, we designed and organised the world’s first Deployathon as a mechanism to bridge the gap between learning about IPv6 and actually implementing it,” stated AFRINIC.

In 2020,AFRINIC redesigned the event and delivered it entirely online. Consequently, 30 organisations from 14 countries were able to accomplish 24 deployment KPIs:

        • 7 validated route6 object

        • 4  address plans in IPAMS

        • 4 advertised IPv6 prefixes

        • 2 validated RPKI ROA objects

        • 2 IPv6 traffic from test VLAN

        • 1 IPv6-enabled DNS

        • 1 DNSSEC IPv6 signed IPv6 reverse zone

        • 1 IPv6-enabled website

        • 1 IPv6-enabled email

        • 1 network with IPv6 user traffic