June 7, 2011
The goal of the Test Flight Day is to motivate organizations across the industry – Internet service providers, hardware makers, operating system vendors and web companies – to prepare their services for IPv6 to ensure a successful transition as IPv4 addresses run out.
Here's what's going on: Every device that connects to the Internet has an address assigned to it so that all the devices can find each other. Even when you connect to a website by using a name like Patch.com, network computers translate that to a numerical IP address behind the scenes so that your web browser or smartphone or tablet can find it.
Even back then the computer engineers who created IP addressing had the forethought to provide capacity for a lot of them, some 4.5 billion addresses. Still not enough. We're running out this year. The new format should allow for 50 thousand trillion trillion addresses per person, according to the chief technologist for Cisco Systems, which makes much of the networking equipment used on the Net.
Engineers are confident the technology behind IPv6 will work, and in fact some parts of the Internet already use it in a dual configuration along with IPv4. The difficulty is in getting everyone to switch. For more information log on to : http://worldipv6day.org/ .
Here's what's going on: Every device that connects to the Internet has an address assigned to it so that all the devices can find each other. Even when you connect to a website by using a name like Patch.com, network computers translate that to a numerical IP address behind the scenes so that your web browser or smartphone or tablet can find it.
Even back then the computer engineers who created IP addressing had the forethought to provide capacity for a lot of them, some 4.5 billion addresses. Still not enough. We're running out this year. The new format should allow for 50 thousand trillion trillion addresses per person, according to the chief technologist for Cisco Systems, which makes much of the networking equipment used on the Net.
Engineers are confident the technology behind IPv6 will work, and in fact some parts of the Internet already use it in a dual configuration along with IPv4. The difficulty is in getting everyone to switch. For more information log on to : http://worldipv6day.org/ .
Are you participating in World IPv6 Day? Tell us in the comments.
