Wednesday, 6 June 2012

IPv6 - The Future

The internet uses the IPv4 system of IP addresses to uniquely identify devices connected to the internet. The format is a series of 4 sets of up to 3 numbers, for example 192.168.0.1. These are comparable to phone numbers, so it's good have a unique number. The trouble is there's ony around 4 billion IPv4 addresses, and we are running out. There wouldn't be enough numbers for each person to have a number each and many people use numerous devices which have IPv4 addresses everyday, PC's, laptops, smartphones, IP TV's etc.

So the future of the internet depends on the availability of unique addresses, and the answer is IPv6. With IPv6 there are about 340 trillion trillion trillion address. Today is World IPv6 Launch day and from now on companies will begin the transition from IPv4 to IPv6. To test if your connection is IPv6 Google have created a website that can check for you: http://ipv6test.google.com/




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