Foundation Projects

Bhutan was one of the last economies in the world to connect to the Internet back in June 1999 and this was done by DrukNet, an ISP under Bhutan Telecom.

Being the leading ISP and the only one with national coverage, Druknet considered it a responsibility to promote ICT growth and the economy's IPv4-to-IPv6 transition as a primary responsibility while endeavoring to play a catalytic role in contributing to Bhutan's socio-economic development.

The manageable networks size and challenges of being a small country provided additional motivation for the objective: TOWARDS THE WORLD’S FIRST IPv6 READY COUNTRY.

The scope of the project covers IPv4 IPv6 dual stack connectivity implementation, extension to server(s) and two Internet services – web and mail. Druknet trained many of Bhutan's Network/System administrators, customers, ISPs and their customers to successfully deploy IPv6 in their infrastructure.

Having allocated IPv6 addresses, the Project Team faced a challenge: the need to implement IPv6 in all networks instead of only overseeing and assisting as needed, as originally planned. The project was unexpectedly faced with the complexities of having to reconfigure and optimize networks and systems. As of this report, we have been able to deploy IPv6 in three customers' networks and core infrastructure. We remain optimistic on our objective as we continue to implement beyond the project deadline.