As the bulk of IPv6 traffic increases, companies will start phasing out their older IPv4 infrastructure, until finally, the entire world is using the same networking standard.

World IPv6 Launch Day is only a few hours old. On June 6, many major ISPs and Internet companies permanently turned on IPv6, the next-generation networking technology, to complement their existing network infrastructure.

The current standard—IPv4—is not going away. In fact, it will likely be around for a few more years as the bulk of Internet users and websites are still on IPv4. For a few years, at least, IPv6 will be operating in parallel, so no one will be missing out on anything. As the bulk of IPv6 traffic increases, companies will start phasing out their older IPv4 infrastructure, until finally, the entire world is using the same networking standard.

The fact that we are (the numeric addresses assigned to every computer on the Internet) is not new. IT administrators and networking professionals have been aware of the looming IPv4 exhaustion for a while. The last blocks (of several million addresses) were to the regional authorities who then allocated the individual addresses to large companies and Internet Service Providers. IPv6, the address space with lots and lots and lots of room to grow (340,282,366,920,938,463,463,374,607,431,768,211,456 addresses, to be exact) have been around for years already.

In fact, 3 percent of domain names and 12 percent of the networks on the Internet already have IPv6 protocol support. The number of IPv6-enabled systems has quadrupled over the past three years.

Why is this launch day a big deal, then?

It just happens to be the first mass-adoption of the longer IP addresses. IPv6 is not backwards compatible with IPv4. Users who start getting IPv6 addresses from their ISP (some IP address registrations in the Asia Pacific region are already getting IPv6 assignments) can access only websites and services that are on IPv6-compliant infrastructure. New businesses that are launching their services are only accessible to customers who are on IPv6 networks.

Considering that Gartner estimates that by 2015, 17 percent of global Internet users and 28 percent of new Internet connections will be using IPv6, the time is ripe for companies to make that plunge.

ISPs have been portions of their networks over the past few years to be able to carry both IPv6 and IPv4 traffic. They offer tunnel services that allow IPv6 customers to access IPv4 sites. Major Internet companfies, notably Google and Netflix, have already launched their services to accept native IPv6 traffic. On launch day, more companies and more ISPs are committing to support IPv6 traffic so that their corner of the Internet remains accessible to new users and devices coming online.

What is happenning on June 6?

ISPs including AT&T, Comcast, Time Warner Cable, Free Tellecom, KDDI (Japan), Free Telecom (France), Internode, and XS4ALL (Netherlands) will turn on IPv6, and more importantly, leave it on, so that their customers who have already made the switch will have native access. Native access means they won't have to rely on tunnel services from other companies to wrap their IPv6 traffic with IPv4 to access the Internet. The number will be small, maybe as low as 1 percent, but it is expected to grow rapidly.

Very few residential customers will have access to this at first, although some ISPs, such as Time Warner Cable, have been conducting pilot programs in some geographic markets.

Networking vendors such as Cisco and D-Link will enable IPv6 by default for their home network devices. This means home users will have a easier time setting up IPv6 networks in their home, and if they have access to an IPv6 pipe from their ISP, they can make that switch easier and faster.

Google, Microsoft, Facebook, and Yahoo will turn on IPv6 for their main sites and keep it on. They companies participated in the test last year, but returned their main pages to IPv4 after the test completed. Google has kept its IPv6-enabled site active (ipv6.google.com), but with the launch day, IPv6 users will no longer have to navigate to a separate page for their search needs. Yahoo promised to bring its other pages, including Sports, Mail, and Finance, onto IPv6 shortly after.

How Do I Know If I am Ready?

The IPv6 readiness test tells you whether you are ready for IPv6. If you have an IPv6 network already running, this is a good way to tell if you have any problems or will encounter any issues on June 6. Yahoo also offers a test and detailed suggestions on how to fix common problems on its IPv6 help page.

Companies have been testing their networks for the past few months, and for the vast majority of folks, the switchover will be seamless. Companies who haven't switched over their networks yet will still be able to surf the web and access services since none of the IPv4 stuff will be getting turned off.