IPv4 and IPv6, standing for Internet Protocol version 4 and 6, are two most common protocols used by machines to find each other on the internet.

George Kuo, APNIC’s Services Director, said he rated Vietnam highly in implementing the protocol, with a IPv6 capable rate of 38.48 percent.

Territories with the highest capable rates are Mayotte (64.75 percent), India (64 percent), Belgium (58.26 percent), and the U.S. (56.11 percent).

In Asia, only India, Malaysia (45.34 percent), and Taiwan (44.87 percent) have higher IPv6 capable rates than Vietnam.

Vietnam has overcome many technologically advanced countries in IPv6 implementation, such as France (11th), Japan (14th), and the U.K. (20th).

First used in the 1980s, IPv4 can only link 4.3 billion addresses together. To overcome this limit, the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) developed IPv6, a new protocol capable of providing infinite number of addresses. The new protocol has many advantages over IPv4, including better capacity, better security, and better compatibility with new devices.

In Southeast Asia, Vietnam, together with Malaysia, is a pioneer in IPv6 implementation with 20 million people connecting to the Internet through IPv6. Gradually replacing IPv4, the older protocol, the high IPv6 capable rate in Vietnam results from its early initiation (2010) by the Vietnamese Ministry of Information and Communications.

"Vietnam has gathered great successes in transitioning to IPv6 by providing temporary tax reduction to IPv6 initiators in the private sector and by creating top-down requirements to implement IPv6 in all governmental Internet activities," Nguyen Hong Thang, deputy head of the Vietnam IPv6 Task Force, said at a conference Thursday.

"Vietnam will continue to advance IPv6 in all Internet-related activities, especially in the public sector, in the future," he said.