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2011-01-14 05:55:47
A global trial of the net's new addressing system is being planned for 8 June.
The test is being held to raise awareness about the imminent change from
version 4 of the addressing scheme to version 6.
Net giants Google, Facebook, Akamai and Yahoo have committed to taking part in
the "test flight" of IPv6.
Net firms are being encouraged to switch to IPv6 as addresses in the old scheme
will run out by November 2011.
"The good news is that internet users don't need to do anything special to
prepare for World IPv6 Day," said Lorenzo Colitti, a network engineer at Google
in a blog post.
"Our current measurements suggest that the vast majority (99.95%) of users will
be unaffected. However, in rare cases, users may experience connectivity
problems, often due to misconfigured or misbehaving home network devices."
The World IPv6 Day is being co-ordinated by the Internet Society, a non-profit
group which educates people and companies about net issues. It has provided a
webpage through which people can test their Ipv6 readiness.
On 8 June, those who sign up will make their pages available via IPv6 for 24
hours to help show up and iron out problems created by the switch to the new
addressing scheme.
"By providing an opportunity for the internet industry to collaborate to test
IPv6 readiness we expect to lay the groundwork for large-scale IPv6 adoption
and help make IPv6 ready for prime time," said Leslie Daigle, chief internet
technology officer at the Internet Society in a statement.
Google already offers an IPv6 version of its search site as does Facebook.
The addressing scheme used by most sites now is defined in version 4 of the
Internet Protocol. This has an address space of about four billion entries.
While this figure was considered to be enough in the late 1970s when IPv4 was
being developed it has proved to be wanting as the net has grown in popularity
and more and more people and devices use it.
At current estimates the pool of IPv4 addresses will run entirely dry in early
November 2011.
Many net authorities and organisations have been calling for net firms to
switch to IPv6 which has an effectively unlimited address space, but progress
has been slow.
In November 2010 Vint Cerf, one of the fathers of the internet, warned that the
net faced "turbulent times" if it did not move quickly to adopt IPv6.