IPv6 : The next version of the Internet begins rolling out today

After years of testing, major Internet companies, internet service providers, and independent Websites, will switch permanently to IPv6, the next-generation Internet networking technology on June 6.

For most end-users and SMBs, nothing will change, as their computers will continue to connect to the Internet and their favorite services will remain online. However, it is a significant milestone as companies shift their focus to building up their IPv6 infrastructure, and slowly wean off the older IPv4 network.

Companies have been upgrading their networking infrastructure, testing their deployments, and making sure that all their services remain accessible to end users, regardless of which networking technology they use.

What Happens June 6?
On Wednesday, the Internet moves into the future.

Last year, hundreds of Internet companies, including Google, Yahoo, Microsoft, Cisco, and Facebook, temporarily switched over to the IPv6 protocol for 24 hours as part of a global stress-test. The idea of World IPv6 Day last year was to find any deployment issues and to raise awareness about the new Internet technology. By that measure, the test was a success. There were no disruptions, and for the most part, the masses surfing the Web didn't notice a thing.

Unfortunately, many of them switched back to IPv4 on June 9.

This year, the Internet Society is promoting the World IPv6 Launch Day as a way to encourage companies to make the switch and keep its IPv6 infrastructure live alongside its existing IPv4 systems. No more switching back, and hopefully, the event would encourage the smaller players to finally make the transition.

Why Switch?
The clock started ticking on the transition to IPv6 last year when the Internet Assigned Numbers Authority (IANA) doled out the last remaining blocks of IPv4 addresses to the individual regional Internet registries in February. While it is up to each regional registry on how the remaining addresses are allocated, industry observers have predicted the Asia-Pacific region will run out of addresses first, followed by North America and Europe.

In fact, there is no longer any IPv4 space in Asia-Pacific, according to the latest information from Internet Society's CTO Leslie Daigle in a guest post on Forbes.com. Europe, the U.S., Latin America and Africa are all expected to run out by 2014, Daigle wrote.

What is IPv6?
The familiar IP addresses that are assigned to practically every device that can access the Internet— computers, smartphones, cameras—follow the IPv4 naming scheme which was developed in 1977. The 32-bit system, which follows the xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx pattern, with each set of numbers ranging from 0 to 254, is capable of generation up to 4.3 billion possible addresses.

Vint Cerf, Google’s current chief Internet evangelist and the “father of the Internet,” has said in previous interviews that he thought 4.3 billion IP addresses was more than enough. With the explosive growth in Internet and the potential of having practically everything connected to the Internet, such as refrigerators sending out alerts when running low on milk and cars that double as wireless hotspots, 4.3 billion sounds quite minuscule.

As a replacement scheme, IPv6 has a staggeringly large number of addresses: 340 undecillion. (That's 340 followed by 36 zeros).

The catch, really, is that while IPv4 systems and IPv6 systems can run in parallel, the newer standard is not backwards-compatible. A user on the IPv6 network with an IPv6 address is limited to accessing Websites and services that also have an IPv6 address. The IPv4 address space, which at the moment consists of most of the Internet, becomes inaccessible.  Over the years, many ISPs and network providers have come up with IPv6-to-IPv4 tunnels, where the IPv6 traffic is wrapped to look like IPv4 traffic to access the Internet.

Some companies, including Google and Netflix, actually have IPv6-compliant sites, and are readily available to users regardless of which address space they are on.

More companies committing to making their services available on IPv6, means users won't have to worry about complicated setup or configuration to get the tunnels working. They would just plug in their network devices, and surf without worrying about what networking technology they are using.

Are You Ready?
As was the case for last year's IPv6 Day, most users won't even notice when their ISPs make the switch to IPv6. Part of the reason is because most modern operating systems, including Apple's Mac OS X, most versions of Microsoft Windows, and major Linux distributions, have supported IPv6 addresses for a number of years. Check out your computer's IP address (on Windows machines, type ipconfig at the command prompt): you are most likely going to see the IPv4 address as well as longer string of letters and numbers making up the IPv6 address.

Many networking vendors have also started selling IPv6-compliant routers and switches for enterprises, but Cisco already has several IPv6-ready routers for the SMB, including theRV180W Wireless-N Multifunction Router and the Linksys EA2700.

In fact, many companies and home users have what is often called a "shadow network," with computers and compliant routers communicating with each other over the IPv6 protocol, Mark Urban, senior director of product marketing at Blue Coat Systems, told PCMag earlier this year.

Posted in: Debarghya mukherjee, IPv6, Next version of IP address