Google, Yahoo, Facebook and Microsoft with its Bing browser will be adopting IPv6 next June.

The new protocol becomes official

“One small step for mankind, one giant step for the internet”: this sums up the impact of 6 June 2012 rather well.

The shortage of IPv4 addresses, which was officially announced a year ago, has prompted the major internet and web players to migrate to the new address protocol.

After a global-scale 24-hour trial of the new IPv6 address protocol, sponsored by the Internet Society in June 2011, in which the major web players took part, the “World IPv6 Launch Day” in 2012 will be a landmark in internet history and the official worldwide launch of IPv6.

The consortium of ISPs, including AT&T (USA), KDDI (Japan) and XS4ALL (the Netherlands) and Free (the pioneers in France) and equipment manufacturers such as Cisco will be joined this year by Google, Yahoo, Facebook and Bing to provide IPv6-based communications.

After the 6 June, these websites, according to the Internet Society, will be able to measure the results of this large-scale launch by working out the percentage of IPv6 traffic of all Internet traffic.

How will it affect users?

There is no reason it should affect them at all – the transition will be seamless as far as users are concerned. The IP addresses managed by v4 will continue to be accessible and most computers’ network cards are already IPv6-compatible. Complete, worldwide IPv6 roll-out will take place over several years.

Further reading

IPv6: a solution to the IP address shortage

• Why the shortage of IP addresses?
• IPv6: the advantages?
• IPv6: why now?
• How will it affect hardware and user workstations
• How can CIOs migrate to IPv6 with Econocom’s expertise?

>> À lire sur l’e-media

>> IPv6: a successful first outing

>> The official website of the World IPv6 Launch Day