The 31st international public meeting of Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) got underway in New Delhi with a call to make IPv4 and IPv6 interoperable since the pool of IPv4 addresses may be exhausted in the next 3 to 4 years.

In his welcome address to the 900 delegates gathered for the ICANN meeting, secretary, information technology Jainder Singh said that IPv6 would not only expand the address space but also enable internet connectivity between a large number of devices. He said India would continue to work closely with ICANN on this issue.

The secretary said there was a need for ensuring participation of all linguistic groups inside the space. The Internet is a key factor in developing a more inclusive information society, which stresses diversity, he said.

Setting the tone for the weeklong meeting, chairman of the board of ICANN Peter Dengate-Thrush said that the introduction of internationalised domain names (IDNs), is an obvious path for further expansion of internet in the country. He said that such a system would allow delivery of internet naming system that allows virtually any language to be recognized in a script that people can recognize.

ICANN is in the process of deliberating whether scripts other than ASCII can be used for IDNs at the top levels. Other topics to be debated in the ICANN Board meeting and the Public meeting are new gTLDS so that business opportunities on the net expand.

ICANN CEO Paul Twomey welcomed the business outsourcing IT service industries in India that have been booming. He said one of the main reasons behind this boom was single global internet that can seamlessly serve the customers both in India and off-shore.

He said as opposed to physical trade where there are tariff and non-tariff barriers, delivery of services in the online environment is globally seamless. Twomey also mentioned about the joint project agreement with US Department of Commerce, which was coming up for review this year and will try to take ICANN into the transition phase where it will be responsible for more of its own activities.

The ICANN itself is an interesting public-private experiment and the world is watching how it performs. Principles such as inclusiveness, transparency, openness, and for the technical coordination of the internet. Introduction of IDNs and DNS security issues are of great importance to ICANN and areas where the world will look for positive influence of ICANN.

The New Delhi meeting is the first of the three public ICANN meetings scheduled in 2008. These meetings are crucial because ICANN's policies are created through a bottom-up, transparent process involving internet community.