IS WORLD IPV6 DAY OF ANY RELEVANCE TO THE MAN ON THE STREET…

Back in 1981, when the Internet was still in nappies and nobody had heard of a mobile phone, an Internet Protocol was devised that allowed 4.3 billion IP addresses to be created. Three decades ago, 4.3 billion must have seemed like massive overkill, even when the pioneers of the Internet – the educational institutions and large corporates that joined the Internet wagon at the outset – were allocated enormous numbers of addresses. But remarkably, in 2011 those initial address releases are proving to be a finite resource, and whilst many of them are not fully utilised, reclaiming them is practically impossible.

You may be wondering why the world would need more than 4.3 billion IPs. The reason is very simple. Every computer or mobile device is assigned a unique IP, which determines the network identification and location address. Behind your Twitter or Facebook address, for example, is a numerical identification that is one of those 4.3 billion created thirty years ago. And every day, hundreds of thousands more IPs are needed. So what can be done when 4.3 billion addresses are not enough?

The original number system – known as IPv4 – is a 32-bit number system. The new number system being gradually implemented, and known as IPv6, is a 128-bit number system that will be able to give every conceivable device now and in the future its own unique address. Without IPv6, it will become far more difficult to connect devices to the web; the ultimate result would be a grey market in IPv4 addresses, as was shown by Microsoft, when they acquired over 666,000 legacy IPv4 addresses for $7.5 million from bankrupt Nortel Networks.

In Australia, the Sydney-based company Conexim Australia is one of the only Australian participants offering the ability to run web sites on IPv6. Perhaps it’s the Aussie laid-back syndrome of ‘she’ll be right, mate’, or maybe it’s because there are still a few IPv4 addresses to be claimed, but for whatever reason the take-up of IPv6 has so far been slow. “We have been testing IPv6 on our internal systems for some time and since the beginning of the year have been offering IPv6 to all of our customers” says Operations Manager Jonathan Thorpe.

“We have been preparing our customers for the imminent migration to the new protocol through education and technical expertise by deploying IPv6 as well as IPv4 as standard using a technique called Dual-Stack.”

This is especially relevant given that most new mobile devices support the new protocol – and that in the Internet registry APNIC, of which Australia is part, countries such as China, Japan, India and South East Asia are also grouped, making it the largest zone in the world. APNIC exhausted its allocation of IPv4 addresses in mid-April 2011.

To raise awareness of this issue - which if not addressed could have far-reaching consequences for the use and cost of almost everything we do on the web - the Internet Society has named Wednesday June 8 as World IPv6 Day. A number of large content providers, such as Google, Facebook and Yahoo as well as web sites hosted by companies such as Conexim, will be running their sites on both the old IPv4 and the new IPv6 protocols as part of a 24-hour test flight. “Web site operators will be watching how their systems behave and assessing the challenges - and there will be some,” says Conexim’s Jonathan Thorpe, who believes the biggest issue will be if there are any problems running dual stack. “But without the implementation of IPv6, the ramifications for long-term growth of the Internet will be far greater.”

For more information either call Conexim Australia on 1300 133 900 or browse our website http://www.conexim.com.au