According to Microsoft, if you want to enjoy the best possible Xbox One gaming experience, you should use IPv6. The Xbox One natively supports IPv6, but finding an ISP that will give you an IPv6 connection to the internet is difficult. By using IPv6 on your Xbox One, you should have less latency when playing multiplayer games, any data that you do transmit over the internet should be safer and more private, and in general any connections made by the Xbox One — either to remote servers, or peer-to-peer — should be faster and more responsive.

IPv6 is the successor to IPv4, the address scheme used by every device to connect to the internet (or local network). When you refer to an IP address (192.168.0.101), you are talking about an IPv4 address. The problem with IPv4, though, by virtue of being a 32-bit number, is that it only allows for a total of 4.3 billion addresses — and there are a lot more than 4.3 billion internet-connected devices on Earth. We’ve managed to extend the life of IPv4 through NAT (Network Address Translation), which allows multiple devices to sit behind one public IPv4 address, but it’s ultimately just a stop-gap measure. At the time of publishing, both the European (RIPE) and Asia/Pacific (APNIC) regional internet registries (RIRs) have exhausted their supply of IPv4 addresses. Elsewhere, in the Americas and Africa, there’s a few million addresses remaining that should be exhausted in the next few years.

With the rapid growth of smartphones and other internet-connected devices, ISPs and consumers are finally starting to feel the squeeze from IPv4 address exhaustion — and thus, some 15 years after it was standardized, ISPs are actually starting to switch over to IPv6. With IPv6 routes opening up across the internet, web companies such as Google, Facebook, and Yahoo are turning on IPv6 as well. Still, though, the growth of IPv6 is slow: In October 2012, 1% of Google’s traffic was IPv6; by September 2013, that had risen to 2%.

How to use IPv6 on your Xbox One

If you want to get the best gaming experience on the Xbox One, you’ll need to find an ISP with a complete IPv6 setup in your area — which is sadly still quite difficult. In the US, most of the major ISPs (AT&T, Verizon, Comcast, Time Warner Cable) are rolling out IPv6, but it’s a slow process, and there isn’t much you can do to speed it up; you’re either on their IPv6 network, or not. Canada, too, is dragging its heels.

Outside the US and Canada, there are more options. In the UK, Andrews & Arnold have provided to-the-home IPv6 connections for 11 years. In the Netherlands, hit up XS4All; in Germany, M-net; in France, Free; in Australia, Internode.

In general, especially if you’re in the US, your best bet is probably to check the list of World IPv6 Day participants, which includes links to the relevant IPv6 roll-out/status pages for major ISPs around the world. In some cases, you might be able to poke your ISP to send you a new IPv6-enabled router, if you’re in an area where the ISP’s backbone has been updated to support IPv6.

Finally, we should probably discuss the PS4 compatibility with IPv6. While Microsoft has clearly stated that the Xbox One will support IPv6, and the IPv4-IPv6 bridging technology Teredo [PDF], Sony has remained oddly quiet about the PS4’s IPv6 capabilities. I would be very, very surprised if the PS4 does not support IPv6 — but while Microsoft is fully on board the IPv6 train, it’s possible that IPv6 will be more of an afterthought on the PS4, and thus isn’t being advertised. Even so, though, assuming the PS4 hardware and operating system support for IPv6, you should at least see a reduction in latency by moving to IPv6 on your PS4.

Now read: Can the Xbox One take over the living room?