Google, Facebook and Yahoo Partner for World IPv6 Day

The fact that IPv4 addresses are running out is not exactly surprising for anyone interested in the technical aspects of the web. But the problem has lingered even as the available addresses became fewer and few ISPs or websites have started taking the necessary steps to avoid the problem.

Now, three of the world's largest sites are banding together with two of the largest content distribution networks for World IPv6 day, a day in which the solution to everyone's problem will be tested at scale.

Google, Facebook and Yahoo, along with Akamai and Limelight Networks, coordinated by the Internet Society, have declared June 8, 2011, Word IPv6 day.

All of them will be enabling full support for IPv6 connections on their networks for a full day, essentially making the switch everyone will eventually have to make eventually.

While they have been offering IPv6 versions of their sites, accessible to those with pure IPv6 connections, as an alternative, the main sites, www.google.com, www.youtube.com, www.facebook.com and so on will be available via both IPv4 and IPv6 addresses on that day, a solution known as dual stack.

This means that most people will be able to connect via IPv4, the 30-year old protocol, as they always do, but also via the new IPv6 for those with ISPs which have deployed the necessary changes.

In theory, only a very small number of people, about 0.05 percent, should experience problems due to this. Poorly configured or simply badly designed hardware, especially on the consumer end, leads to some people having problems connecting with dual-stack sites.

This has prevented many from enabling IPv6 for their sites, but things have to move forward at one point. June 8 should be the biggest test for the deployment of IPv6 yet and the ones involved are encouraging other sites to join the move.

The hope is that, not only the scale of the test will uncover problems that may have been difficult to spot otherwise, but also that the move will raise awareness with everyone involved, websites, hosting companies, ISPs and the regular internet users.