The Indian government is looking to leverage its years-long effort to boost Internet Protocol version 6 (IPv6) to be able to block websites and apps more effectively, Business Standard reports. The report quotes a senior Department of Telecommunications official as saying, "We have been told that with this, it will be possible to block services more precisely. We are pushing stakeholders to upgrade their networks, devices, and apps to be IPv6-ready." This way, the government reasons that it won't have to shut down the internet every time there is social unrest. The Home Ministry recently issued a similar advisory — which did not mention IPv6 — asking ISPs whether blocking individual apps would be possible. IPv6 is a successor of IPv4, which is the most widely used internet protocol standard today. IPv4 sets the rules for IP addresses, but comes with a glaring limitation of supporting only 4.1 billion addresses. That doesn't even cover the world's population. IPv6, which has much longer alphanumeric addresses, has more room for addresses than there are atoms on earth. Blocking websites also becomes much easier for ISPs, since apps and websites' hosting providers aren't rapidly changing IP addresses to deal with the scarcity of address combinations. Since every device will have a unique address, blocking services will become a much easier technical task for ISPs. A few points to note: Government of India has blocked social media apps before: On the 17 April 2017, the Indian government had banned 22 social media apps in Jammu…
