After years of testing, major Internet companies, internet service providers, and independent Websites, will switch permanently to IPv6, the next-generation Internet networking technology on June 6.
For most end-users and SMBs, nothing will change, as their computers will continue to connect to the Internet and their favorite services will remain online. However, it is a significant milestone as companies shift their focus to building up their IPv6 infrastructure, and slowly wean off the older IPv4 network.
Companies have been upgrading their networking infrastructure, testing their deployments, and making sure that all their services remain accessible to end users, regardless of which networking technology they use.
What Happens June 6?
On Wednesday, the Internet moves into the future.
Last year, hundreds of Internet companies, including Google, Yahoo, Microsoft, Cisco, and Facebook, temporarily switched over to the IPv6 protocol for 24 hours as part of a global stress-test. The idea of World IPv6 Day last year was to find any deployment issues and to raise awareness about the new Internet technology. By that measure, the test was a success. There were no disruptions, and for the most part, the masses surfing the Web didn't notice a thing.
Unfortunately, many of them switched back to IPv4 on June 9.
This year, the Internet Society is promoting the World IPv6 Launch Day as a way to encourage companies to make the switch and keep its IPv6 infrastructure live alongside its existing IPv4 systems. No more switching back, and hopefully, the event would encourage the smaller players to finally make the transition.
Why Switch?
The clock started ticking on the transition to IPv6 last year when the Internet Assigned Numbers Authority (IANA) doled out the last remaining blocks of IPv4 addresses to the individual regional Internet registries in February. While it is up to each regional registry on how the remaining addresses are allocated, industry observers have predicted the Asia-Pacific region will run out of addresses first, followed by North America and Europe.
In fact, there is no longer any IPv4 space in Asia-Pacific, according to the latest information from Internet Society's CTO Leslie Daigle in a guest post on Forbes.com. Europe, the U.S., Latin America and Africa are all expected to run out by 2014, Daigle wrote.
What is IPv6 ????
