The European Commission (EC) wants to see a quarter of all European businesses, government offices and homes switched over to IPv6 by 2010.
The EC wants governments to lead the way by migrating their own internet networks and public websites to IPv6, and follow the example of the US, which has made IPv6 a condition of awarding government contracts for web services.
IPv6 is considered crucial to the infrastructure of the internet, which is expected to run out of new internet addresses in 2010. According to the EC's own figures, IPv4, which has been in use since 1984, provides around 4.3 billion addresses, of which only 700 million or 16 per cent remain free.
