A three-day international training workshop on Internet Resource Management, DNS Security Extensions (DNSSEC) and Internet Protocol version 6 (IPv6) started on July 18 at a hotel in Islamabad. The technical training workshop is organised by Pakistan Telecommunication Authority (PTA) in collaboration with Asia Pacific Network Information Centre (APNIC).
The objective behind this training workshop is to provide a capacity building opportunity to local community members. It is noteworthy that this is the first such workshop hosted in Islamabad and facilitated by APNIC. Dr Khawar Siddique Khokhar, Member (Technical), PTA inaugurated the training workshop. During his opening remarks, he said that telecommunication sector in Pakistan was highly competitive and currently the sector was rapidly migrating from circuit switching to packet switching. Almost all long distance and international service providers have deployed Next Generation Network(s) and are operating Internet Protocol (IP)-based environment in the core network.
He further said that service providers in Pakistan had already acquired IPv6 blocks and were presently carrying out test implementation plans in their networks. They are also looking forward to deploy DNSSEC protocol in their respective Internet Domain Name space.
PTA believes that with mutual understanding and co-ordination, this important leap towards next generation IP and DNSSEC transition would be accomplished through necessary policy and regulatory approach. Holding such training workshops will surely assist in building local capacity building that is mandatory to equip networks with IPv6.-PR