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It's World IPv6 Launch Day: Welcome to The Wider Web

By - Source: Internet Society | B 36 comments

Welcome to the new Internet.

Today marks the official launch of IPv6, the new Internet Protocol that's permanently being deployed by ISPs in more than 100 countries, home router equipment manufacturers and leading websites like Google, Facebook, YouTube and Yahoo.

Parties committed to the new protocol will now make IPv6 the "new normal" from here on out, expanding the Internet from its current four billion IP addresses to over 340 trillion, trillion, trillion addresses. That said, the End of the Internet is no longer in view.

"The support of IPv6 from these thousands of organizations delivers a critical message to the world: IPv6 is not just a 'nice to have'; it is ready for business today and will very soon be a 'must have,'" said Leslie Daigle, Chief Internet Technology Officer, Internet Society. "We believe that the commitment of these companies to deploy IPv6 will ensure that they remain industry leaders. Any company wishing to be effective in the new Internet should do the same."

Starting June 6 at 0000 UTC, major websites are permanently enabling IPv6 on their main sites. ISPs will permanently enable IPv6 across a significant portion of their current and all new residential wireline subscribers. Home networking equipment manufacturers will enable IPv6 by default through their range of home router products.

The launch arrives after the last blocks of the IPv4 addresses were assigned to the Regional Internet Registries in February 2011. That means there is no remaining IPv4 address space to be distributed in the Asia Pacific region. Even more, IPv4 address space is expected to run out in Europe this year, in the U.S. next year, and in Latin America and Africa in 2014.

"Many parts of the world are increasing broadband penetration, more smart phones and network-ready devices are entering the market, and the sheer number of Internet users is steadily increasing – all of which raises IP address consumption," the Internet Society said on Wednesday. "With IPv4 becoming scarce, the need for IPv6 deployment grows daily."

By enabling IPv6, the Internet can now sustain billions of people that are not connected today. It will allow a wide range of devices to connect directly with one another, and it will help ensure the Internet can continue its current growth rate indefinitely.

"IPv6 is key to preserving the health and openness of the Internet for decades to come," said Stephen Stuart, Distinguished Engineer at Google. "We're proud to be one of the founding participants in World IPv6 Launch, and we look forward to the day when IPv6 is available to Internet users everywhere."

"As more and more people and devices connect to the web, supporting IPv6 has become crucial to the future scalability of the Internet," said Jay Parikh, Vice President of Infrastructure at Facebook. "It's awesome to see so many people and companies working together across the world to make progress on this transition."

World IPv6 Launch is organized by the Internet Society as "part of its mission to ensure that the Internet remains open and accessible for everyone -- including the other five billion people not yet connected to the Internet."

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Top Comments
  • 17 Hide
    belardo , June 6, 2012 10:14 PM
    very much, really.

    Is your website bigger than Yahoo?
  • 12 Hide
    aoneone , June 6, 2012 9:56 PM
    Really
  • 11 Hide
    Cy-Kill , June 6, 2012 10:12 PM
    None of the telecom companies in Canada are even trying to upgrade their systems to IPv6, so who knows when we'll see adoption start happening here.
Other Comments
    Display all 36 comments.
  • 12 Hide
    aoneone , June 6, 2012 9:56 PM
    Really
  • 11 Hide
    Cy-Kill , June 6, 2012 10:12 PM
    None of the telecom companies in Canada are even trying to upgrade their systems to IPv6, so who knows when we'll see adoption start happening here.
  • 17 Hide
    belardo , June 6, 2012 10:14 PM
    very much, really.

    Is your website bigger than Yahoo?
  • 10 Hide
    amk-aka-Phantom , June 6, 2012 10:22 PM
    Well, damn it, I still have no idea how to work with IPv6 syntax. Better catch up before it's too late.
  • 6 Hide
    Vettedude , June 6, 2012 10:26 PM
    Uverse has a page showing their support for IPv6, and all my equipment except their dumb Home Gateway supports it. It says they need to push a firmware upgrade to support IPv6. FAIL.
  • -8 Hide
    danny2000 , June 6, 2012 10:50 PM
    Quote:
    "...and leading websites like Google, Facebook, YouTube and Yahoo."

    Yahoo, really?



    I prefer Yahoo as Google is too big and REALLY big in data mining....
  • 3 Hide
    chibiwings , June 6, 2012 10:59 PM
    IPv6 Has been around for quite some time. it's been in some ISP for quite some time already on enterprise level.
  • -9 Hide
    theconsolegamer , June 6, 2012 11:09 PM
    Skynet's online now folks. Say goodbye to the internet as we know it.
  • 4 Hide
    i_hack_sites , June 6, 2012 11:13 PM
    I did this analysis back in March, here is a quick summary of sites in top 1 million found with AAAA records:
    * 1% of total sites
    * ~5% of sites in Germany and Russia
    * 0.38% of sites in the USA
    * 90% of sites are running Apache or Nginx
    * 4% of sites are running IIS

    In July, I am planning on a follow-up to see if there is any major change in the numbers.
    http://hackertarget.com/ipv6-in-top-sites-infographic/
  • 0 Hide
    A Bad Day , June 6, 2012 11:17 PM
    Mediacom (at least in my local area): No IPv6
  • -4 Hide
    Marco925 , June 6, 2012 11:32 PM
    I guess now the series of tubes will now be an endless series of tubes?
  • 0 Hide
    bin1127 , June 6, 2012 11:47 PM
    I know a lot of isp's are asking customers to buy a new docsis3 modem for $150 because of the change to support ipv6.

    But except for a larger registry, is it faster or more secure?
  • -2 Hide
    hwangchan , June 7, 2012 1:01 AM
    bin1127I know a lot of isp's are asking customers to buy a new docsis3 modem for $150 because of the change to support ipv6. But except for a larger registry, is it faster or more secure?

    To summarize the differences as easy as I can explain, the difference between ip4 and ip6 is the length of the address. If your ip4 address was 111.111.1.111, where the 1's could only be a digit between 0-9. Notice how there are 4 segments of numbers separated by a period, hence ip4. also, the format only allowed 3 digits between the periods, limiting the number of unique addresses.

    IP6 address extends the address to be 6 segments of data, with up to 4 characters, also allowing 0-9 as well as a-z. It might also allow other ascii characters, this i am unsure of. The format would look something like this xxxx:xxxx:xxxx:xxxx:xxxx:xxxx. Also, ip6 can have header and footer data to identify intranet vs internet, as well as add a suffix so if you have 5 devices at home, they all use a single IP address, and your router will identify each device with an "individual" ip address by changing the suffix.

    Ultimately the change doesn't affect performance in any way, just allows more users to access the internet on more devices. If you don't switch over right away, most the internet will still work, anything that keeps the ip4 active, but newer sites that use only an ip6 address may not be accessible.

    I know its a bit confusing, but did that help?
  • 1 Hide
    hwangchan , June 7, 2012 1:13 AM
    hwangchanIP6 address extends the address to be 6 segments of data, with up to 4 characters, also allowing 0-9 as well as a-f.


    Fixed, hex based not ascii.
  • 4 Hide
    Anonymous , June 7, 2012 1:35 AM
    Actually hwangchan the letters only go through A-F because it is a hexadecimal number. HEX numbers are 123456789ABCDEF. Basically IPV4 is 32 bits and IPV6 is 128 bits. With IPV6 there is enough addresses to assign a different IP to every square inch of the earth.
    IPV6 address would be 0000:0000:0000:0000:0000:0000:0000:0000 which is 8 quartets of HEX numbers.
    That is kinda the basics.
  • 0 Hide
    A Bad Day , June 7, 2012 1:49 AM
    bin1127I know a lot of isp's are asking customers to buy a new docsis3 modem for $150 because of the change to support ipv6. But except for a larger registry, is it faster or more secure?


    IPv4 has a limit of around 3 billion unique IP addresses, which is not enough as of now. IPv6 has over a trillion unique IP addresses, which should be enough for another two decades or so, or at least outlast the creators of IPv6.
  • 1 Hide
    livebriand , June 7, 2012 1:49 AM
    Comcast still hasn't deployed IPv6 around here. :(  Come on, get with it! I'm pretty sure my router and modem are compatible though.
  • 7 Hide
    Anonymous , June 7, 2012 1:57 AM
    Canada has the internet?
  • 0 Hide
    s3anister , June 7, 2012 2:08 AM
    bin1127I know a lot of isp's are asking customers to buy a new docsis3 modem for $150 because of the change to support ipv6. But except for a larger registry, is it faster or more secure?

    I actually just bought a new DOCSIS 3.0 modem and it was not $150, it was $88 at newegg. Significantly cheaper than your figure.

    Also, I know of no ISP currently requiring people to get new modems, however, if they have Comcast and rent their modem they can get a DOCSIS 3.0 version replacement for free (still have to pay the rental fee, of course).
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