KIEV, Feb. 23 – The forthcoming global switch to a new system of Internet address assignment, the so-called IPv6 (Internet protocol version 6) threatens to cause Ukrainian Internet providers serious problems, said Serhiy Polischuk, director of the Ukrainian Traffic Exchange Network UA-IX.

"Only 3% of Ukrainian providers have got IPv6 addresses. This is the lowest rate in Europe," he told Interfax-Ukraine.

On February 1, 2011, the Internet Assigned Numbers Authority (IANA) distributed the last 80 million IP addresses in IPv4 space among five regional administrators. As expected, by autumn 2011 all of them will be transferred to local providers and there will be no available IP address. Because of this, the global Internet community plans to switch to new system of addresses.