As has been said numerous times throughout the Internet, the pool of available IPv4 (32 bit) addresses are running out. This is due to an ever increasing number of Internet users all over the world. In response to this, the standards for IPv4’s successor were developed by the Internet Engineering Task Force. The new IPv6 standard uses 128-bit addresses, which supports 2^128 (approximately 340 undecillion) individual addresses. Compared to IPv4’s 32-bit addresses, which can support up a little under 4.30 billion addresses (4,294,967,296 to be exact), the new Internet protocol will easily be able to assign everyone a unique IP address and will enable support for multiple devices per user without the specific need for network address translation (NAT).

World IPv6 Day Goes Off Without A Hitch - Networking 2

Today is World IPv6 Day, and is the first widespread (live) trial of IPv6. Over a 24 hour period numerous large and small websites plan to switch on IPv6 to test for consumer readiness for the protocol. Big companies such as Google, Facebook, Yahoo, Youtube, and Bing are participating by enabling IPv6 alongside IPv4 to test how many users are able to connect to IPv6 versus IPv4. Led by the Internet Society, consumers and businesses are encouraged to help test the new IP protocol by visiting the participants sites and running readiness tests.

According to Network World, the trial has been going very well. They state that, according to Arbor Networks, overall IPv6 traffic volume has “doubled during the first 12 hours.” Further, Akamai experienced a tenfold increase in IPv6 traffic just before the event. Fortunately, this increase did not result in an increase of DDoS attacks, which Akami states were minimal. The June 8, 2011 event was used as a deadline of sorts by many businesses, and resulted in many large corporations getting their IPv6 protocol up and running.

While the event only lasts 24 hours, some large websites likely will continue to enable IPv6 alongside IPv4 addressing. Network Wold quotes Champagne in hoping more businesses will move to IPv6 after seeing the successes of the World IPv6 Day participants now that “everybody went into the water today and found out that the water is fine.”

It will certainly be interesting to see if the success continues and if consumers still on IPv4 can be made ready before the 32-bit address well runs dry, much like the move to digital TV broadcasting in the US saw many deadline push-backs.  Are you ready for IPv6?