Several large companies at 00:01 GMT today have turned on IPv6, to encourage more companies to adopt the new standard. If you’re unsure what IPv6 is, we need to start with IPv4.
Every-time you connect to a website, your device needs an IP Address, which is sort of like looking up a number in an address book. Now IPv4 can only have 4.3 Billion possible combinations of addresses, and the Internet is desperately running out of these addresses (see graph below)…
Introducing IPv6
To solve the IPv4 problem, engineers came up with a new protocol, named IPv6. It’s basically a longer version of IPv4, which can support up to 340 trillion trillion trillion addresses! To put than in perspective, that’s enough addresses to offer everyone on earth their own list of billions of IP’s. So we won’t be running out anytime soon!
More About IPv6
Here are some useful links to find out more about IPv6…
Google’s IPv6 Page: http://www.google.com/intl/en/ipv6/
Explanation Video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-Uwjt32NvVA
Test IPv6 Connectivity: http://test-ipv6.com