Amadeus Consulting Discusses World IPv6 Day Today: Help Test the Future

Article by Todd McMurtrey

Help Test the Future: World IPv6 Day is Today

For a very small percentage of users June 8, 2011 is going to be a bad day on the Internet. In fact, approximately .5% of users may not be able to access popular websites like Google and Facebook, so you may see a lot of comments that "Facebook is down," or "Twitter is not working."

But for the other 99.5% of internet users, today will be just like any other day. Except of course, you are helping stress-test the future of the Internet. Pretty exciting!

What is IPv6?

The Internet has its own addressing system that gives each connected device or network its own unique address. This is how a computer in the US knows how to find a website that is hosted in Germany, for example. This addressing system is called IPv4.

Whenever you type in an address, say www. AmadeusConsulting .com, your computer automatically translates that into an IPv4 address that looks like 174.129.15.91.

However, IPv4 was designed in the 1970's with little consideration on how big the Internet would become. As such, it was only designed to handle about 4.5 billion addresses. This may sound like a lot, until you consider that already there are 2-3 billion people connected online already, and many of those people have multiple connected devices (computers, smartphones, etc.), as well as corporate and business systems. All together, we have already run out of IPv4 addresses.

For now we have workarounds and limited alternatives that allow everything to keep working as normal, but those will eventually reach their limit as well, and IPv6 provides a much cleaner and simpler solution, although harder to implement.

IPv6 is a new addressing system that provides "50 thousand trillion trillion" addresses. (Picture a 5 with 38 zero's behind it). In other words, it's more than enough to assign a unique address to every cell in your body, for every person on the planet. IPv6 is designed to last us "forever," or at least hopefully the next hundred years or so.

Implementing IPv6 will initially have the largest impact on Internet service providers, and major websites including cloud computing services, ecommerce websites, search engines and major content providers. But eventually it will trickle down to every user and service online.

What Makes Today Special?

World IPv6 Day is the first day that all the major websites and Internet providers will be simultaneously testing their IPv6 networks.

The issue is that during the next few years, we will be slowly transitioning to IPv6 addresses, which basically function separately from the IPv4 network. However, during this transition phase, people will be using both IPv4 and IPv6 addresses, and so the networks need to be able to transition one to the other.

Today's "event" will help test the ability of major networks to run primarily on IPv6 by default, while transferring all IPv4 users to an alternative system. Most of us do not have systems that will be able to use IPv6 immediately (99% of us in fact), and so what should happen is that our computers should try to connect using the new addressing system, and then "fail over" to the old one. The ability to do this seamlessly and efficiently will be vital during the transition to IPv6.

During this test, the major networks and internet providers will gathering data to understand weak points and failures that they can share with each other and with smaller networks to help aid in the transition.

Eventually, IPv6 will be the standard protocol and all new computers, routers and networks will be using it as the primary standard.

Check our blog for a more in-depth look at what is IPv6 and what will it mean for your business.

Amadeus Consulting creates custom technology solutions that produce real results. Amadeus Consulting is excited to bring the latest news and tips about mobile development, search marketing, creative design and software technology to the forefront. This thought leadership allows Amadeus Consulting to stay on top of tech trends and changes in order to benefit our clients. To find out more about Amadeus Consulting

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