New Delhi (PTI): The Department of Telecom will set up a National Internet Registry to create more Web addresses as the country's existing resources will run out of capacity in one year.

Striking down regulator TRAI's proposal that such a registry be set up by National Internet Exchange of India (NIXI), a public-private partnership body, DoT in a letter to the watchdog said the registry involves licensing issues and only the department is empowered to set up such a body.

As Indian firms are likely to fall short of web addresses by 2011, the government is working out a migration path to the next generation Internet protocol address in India (from Internet Protocol IPv4 to IPv6), said industry experts.

All existing IPv4 addresses will run out by April 2010 because of the sheer volume growth. This makes it necessary for users to move over to IPv6, or the next version that supports a total of 16 billion IP addresses compared to 4.3 billion IPv4 addresses, they said .

Australia-based Asia Pacific Network Information Centre (APNIC) is responsible for IPv6 resource allocation in the region.

With the increased Internet penetration in the country, newer devices, applications and services are likely to be deployed, and that will generate a greater demand for IP (Web) addresses.