JEDDAH — Reseaux IP Europeens Network Coordination Centre (RIPE NCC) – the independent, not-for-profit membership organization that supports the infrastructure of the Internet through technical coordination in Europe, Middle East and Central Asia, revealed in a report that one of the main challenges faced by GCC countries is that mobile operators are currently not ready to deploy IPv6 to their mobile customers. In fact, none of the mobile operators in the Levant region have made the transition to IPv6 yet, though some have started experimenting. Current routing and traffic management practices are also hindering the efficient operation of networks in many countries throughout the region.

In its first country report on opportunities and challenges for the Internet in Saudi Arabia and the GCC countries, the report noted that operators in the GCC countries tend to see IPv6 deployment as the solution to IPv4 exhaustion, yet deployment levels remain below the expected figure. While many networks have IPv6 configured to their upstream providers, the key component still missing is deployment to customers and end users. Despite being released in 1998, Google saw the percentage of users accessing its services over IPv6 pass the 1% threshold in 2013. “Although the current figure is now around 26%, we are committed to ensuring it become much higher,” it pointed out.

The report comes during a period of strong growth for the Internet in Saudi Arabia and the Middle East more generally. Trends in the global economy and the business environment more generally have many governments and business leaders concerned about challenges that could affect further growth and development.

In this context, the RIPE NCC has a range of tools and services – including RIPEstat, RIPE Atlas and RIPE Labs statistics – that provide access to information about Internet number resource holdings, routing, connectivity, IPv6 readiness and other useful metrics on Internet development. Drawing on data and measurements available through these services, the RIPE NCC provided its perspective on challenges, trends and opportunities for Saudi Arabia and the GCC countries.

Chris Buckridge, External Relations Manager at RIPE NCC, said: “The Internet may be a global network of networks, but for many stakeholders, understanding what is happening with the Internet in their own country is fundamental to helping them contribute to its economic development and improvement. This country report is part of our contribution to an ongoing collaboration with all stakeholders, including those from both the public and private sectors, aimed at developing effective solutions to the challenges posed by Internet growth.”

The RIPE NCC will continue to work for a more stable and resilient Internet by ensuring the reliable allocation of Internet number resources, the continued security of the processes associated with coordinating these resources, and by helping to guarantee the security of the Internet’s routing system as a whole. These efforts also demonstrate the success of the Regional Internet Registry model of regulation that brings together diverse stakeholders.

With the massive degree of consolidation in terms of content and services that has taken place in recent years, ISPs that switch on IPv6 typically report that as much as 70–75% of the traffic on their network immediately travels across IPv6 (as the bulk of their users are connecting to services like Facebook, Google and YouTube – all of which are IPv6-enabled).

While IPv6 deployment is widely seen by operators in the GCC countries as the solution to IPv4 exhaustion, deployment levels remain low and not nearly where we might expect them to be (based on our measurements and those conducted by others). While many networks have IPv6 configured to their upstream providers, the key component still missing is deployment to customers and end users.

“By examining the routing information collected using the RIPE NCC’s Routing Information Service (RIS) collectors and comparing it to the RIPE Database, we see that, while 55% of the LIRs in Saudi Arabia have received IPv6 resources from the RIPE NCC, only 21% of them are actually announcing it in global routing. This measurement does not take into account whether packets are travelling across IPv6, meaning that the real deployment figure is even lower,” the report further said. In recent years, the percentage of people using the Internet across the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) countries has continued to rise, sometimes steadily, sometimes quite sharply. “If we compare the situation at the end of 2017 to the situation in 2010, we see that the proportion of people using the Internet in this group of countries has risen by an average of approximately 35%,” the report noted.

In many of the GCC countries, the percentage of Internet users has now risen well over 90%, putting those countries high in the global rankings for Internet penetration. In other countries, such as Saudi Arabia, although Internet penetration is high, there is room for further growth. Indeed, future growth seems likely, with Internet penetration in Saudi Arabia having consistently risen by around 5% or more each year since 2010. So, with approximately 26.4 million Internet users in Saudi Arabia as of the end of 2017, and the likelihood of yet more growth, it is useful to consider whether the country has adequate Internet number resources to meet the growing needs of its users. — SG