Atlas Participates in World IPv6 Day

We’re pleased to participate in World IPv6 Day on June 8^th. What is IPv6, why does it have a special day, and why is Atlas participating, you ask?

All good questions. I’ve tried to break down the specifics of World IPv6 Day below, but if you’d like more info, I’ve also listed additional resources at the end of the post.

What’s IPv6?

IPv6 is an upgrade to the current version of Internet Protocol (IPv4). While IPv6 has been around for years, it hasn’t been adopted across the Internet because the industry players (from website operators to operating systems (OS) engineers to Internet service providers (ISPs)) have to broadly upgrade their systems to support IPv6 traffic. As IPv6 traffic is minimal at this time, there hasn’t been a lot of incentive to do this.

One big issue is that IPV6 is not backward compatible with IPv4, which means that until the Internet moves to IPv6, the industry will need to support both (with either a dual stack or a translation between the two versions).

Why the big push now (and why is IPv6 getting its own day)?

As it stands, IPv4 is slated to run out of new IP addresses in 2011, which necessitates an orchestrated move across the industry to upgrade to IPv6 in the near future. IPv6 will support an expanded addressing scheme (128-bit addresses over IPv4’s 32-bits)—quadrupling the amount of address space, as well as the ability to connect to an unlimited number of devices. To give you a better idea of how much address space this is, consider this: IPv4 has about four billion addresses, but IPv6 has about 340 trillion trillion trillion addresses.

The Internet Society is sponsoring World IPv6 Day where, for 24 hours, hundreds of industry players are dedicating traffic to IPv6. The intention of this global trial is to uncover any potential issues, to better determine the amount of IPv6 traffic, and to understand what providers need to develop to support IPv6 traffic. Dedicating an effort on this scale provides a measured, pragmatic way of approaching such a wide-scale upgrade.

Why is Atlas participating?

We’re eager to participate in World IPv6 Day as a member of the global Internet community. This day is a critical milestone in our industry. While we’ve successfully conducted some IPv6 testing, the trial will help us better understand what we need to do to natively support it, and how we can share those lessons across other Microsoft properties.

It’s estimated that IPv6 accounts for no more than one percent of all Internet traffic, and the industry will have more data on this after June 8. We do not anticipate any issues for Atlas clients, and will be monitoring this closely throughout the day.

If you’d like to test your individual IPv6 readiness, click here. To learn more, visit the Internet Society.

Thanks for reading,

Lori Goode