IPv6 day - June 9th 2011

David Heath
Monday, 09 May 2011 22:50

Business IT - Networking

Also known as 'Test Flight Day,' World IPv6 day is an opportunity for all interested parties to test the next generation of communications functionality across all parts of the Internet.

The reports of the Internet's demise now that the top-level authority has run out of IPv4 addresses should not yet be exaggerated, although rationing of addresses has already started at the regional level.

According to the Internet Society, on June 8th (mostly June 9th in Australia) 'Google, Facebook, Yahoo!, Akamai and Limelight Networks will be amongst some of the major organisations that will offer their content over IPv6 for a 24-hour 'test flight'. The goal of the Test Flight Day is to motivate organizations across the industry - Internet service providers, hardware makers, operating system vendors and web companies - to prepare their services for IPv6 to ensure a successful transition as IPv4 addresses run out.'

In addition other major international organisations taking part will include Cisco, W3C, Bing, Toms' Hardware, Rackspace, VeriSign, Sprint Nextel and Juniper Networks.

Reports (Norwegian, translation required) have already shown that organisations taking part in previous similar events have either not disabled IPv6 services after the event, or permanently enabled them soon after.

All organisations taking part will publish AAAA records, which are the primary structure by which IPv6 servers announce their presence and thus accept connections from to IPv6 clients.  Oddly however, recent base-line research in advance of the IPv6 Day has suggested IPv6 traffic has actually declined in recent months.

So, who is ready for the change?