$1 billion to help spread Web code

The Korean government said yesterday it will spend 1 trillion won ($1.07 billion) on efforts to help the country adopt a next-generation Internet protocol by 2013.
The new network layer system, called Internet Protocol version 6, abbreviated IPv6, provides a virtually infinite number of addresses, compared to the current IPv4, which is plagued by an Internet address crunch, officials said.
“All state and public Internet protocols will be converted to the IPv6 mode by 2010,” Park Jong-koo, a senior official at the Ministry of Science and Technology, said at a meeting of science and technology ministers.
“The private sector will also be encouraged to switch to the new mode by 2013,” he said.
The official said the government will prod local Internet system developers to boost their know-how regarding IPv6 equipment and hardware.
Those fields are now dominated by such foreign companies as Juniper Networks Inc. and Cisco Systems Inc.
Korea’s push for a switch to IPv6 comes as the United States and other countries are trying to upgrade their Internet network layers to the new mode.
According to experts, IPv4 allows the use of just 4.3 billion Internet addresses, while IPv6 can provide a practically limitless number of addresses.