Speakers at a workshop in the city yesterday called for gradual adoption of the latest internet protocol IPv6 to cope with the increasing size and coverage of internet technology globally.

The latest version of the internet protocol technology, more popularly known as IPv6, has already been adapted in a number of developed economies and has already been introduced in a number of Indian cities.

In the current trend, the present IPv4 technology will be exhausted and considered redundant in the near future. It is time for slow transition from the present IPv4 to IPv6 to cope with the changing international trend, the speakers said.

Arranged by Bangladesh Computer Council and sponsored by Grameen-phone, the daylong workshop was attended among others by BCC Executive Director M Mahfuzur Rahman, Director of Bangladesh Telecom Regulatory Commission (BTRC) Rakibul Hassan and GP IT's Chief Executive Kazi Islam.

The current version of internet protocol has some limitations, experts observed. The

address space of IPv4 is 32 bit length which means only 4.2 billion addresses can be accommodated with this, they said.

The state-of-the-art IPv6 having an address space of 128 bit length will be able to deliver 340 billion addresses, they observed. The speakers, however, noted that due to the huge size and coverage of Internet these days, it would be impossible to have a fast shift to the new version.

To make the whole process feasible, the coexistence of both IPv4 and IPv6 must be arranged in a practical and simple manner, the experts suggested.

The transition would also be a costly process the speakers observed while stressing on encouraging the transition process among the concerned authorities to overcome the hindrance.

"With the rest of the world gradually moving toward the next version of internet protocol standard, we should not miss the train as the new version should become globally accepted in no time," said Mahfuzur Rahman.

Speakers at the workshop specified various techniques and recommendations for smooth and stepwise transition to IPv6.