The Reserve Bank on Thursday asked all payment system operators to take
necessary actions for migrating to the latest version of Internet
Protocol IPv6 as per the directives of DoT.
"The Department of
Telecommunication (DoT) has undertaken the initiative of migration from
IPv4 to IPv6. They have expressed that the migration of all payment
gateways, banks, financial institutions, insurance companies, etc,
including their websites should be completed at the earliest," RBI said
in a notification.
Since migration to IPv6 is an eventuality that
has to be accepted and manage proactively, government wants it to be
done in a planned manner, it added.
"We advise you to initiate
necessary action by constituting a special team to complete the
migration at the earliest and keep us informed of the progress made by
March 30, 2013," RBI said in a notification.
Since the current
version of Internet Protocol (IPv4) has almost run out of addresses, the
broadband revolution will ride on next generation Internet Protocol
(IPv6), RBI added.
Internet Protocol version 6 (IPv6) is the
latest IP, the primary communications protocol upon which the entire
Internet is built. It is intended to replace the older IPv4, which is
still employed for the vast majority of Internet traffic as of 2012.
The
RBI has already asked banks and non-banking financial companies to
migrate to the latest version of the Internet Protocol by December,
2012.