On 8 June 2011, ISOC will hold the World IPv6 Day. Google, Yahoo!, Facebook, YouTube, Akamai will be amongst some of major organizations offering their IPv6-enabled content for a 24-hour “test flight”, along with traditional access to IPv4 protocol. Today, most IPv6-enabled Internet resources are available through subdomains, for example, ipv6.google.com. However, on the day of the Test Flight IPv6 addresses will be assigned to main domains. User devices operating IPv6 will benefit from access to these resources without having to enter additional names, while others operating solely IPv4 will get access to content as before. Internet service providers who can operate the IPv6 protocol for their users’ access to the Internet thus will be able to measure the real volume of traffic by operating this protocol and assess preparedness of their infrastructure for the transition to IPv6, as well as assess potential challenges facing users.
In Russia the World IPv6 Day will coincide with the 1st ENOG (Eurasian Network Operators Group) conference, which is the Forum of Eurasian Internet operators. The ENOG Forum will host a press conference, which will provide detailed information on the World IPv6 Day and brief attendees about the current test results.
The main purpose of the World IPv6 Day is to test the Internet’s preparedness for transition to IPv6 protocol, as IPv4 addresses ran out, which was announced on 9 February 2011 at the ceremony held by NRO and ICANN. In fact, 8 June 2011 will be the starting point for the mass transition of users and providers and content traffic to IPv6.
Today, the volume of content provided over IPv6 protocol is small. Due to this fact, the number of Ipv6 enabled Internet service providers is insignificant. Many organizations consider the cost of Ipv6 deployment to be too high and therefore are not in a hurry with the transition. In this case, all the experts agree on one thing: there is no alternative to Ipv6 transition, and the sooner this is done, the better. Participants in the World IPv6 Day have a unique opportunity to test their own preparedness for the transition and to eliminate all shortcomings and errors, while the volume of IPv6 traffic is still low. The Ipv6 testing of such magnitude will be held for the first time. However, eralier held regional and national tests (as, for example, in Germany in the autumn of 2010) demonstrated that all identified problems can be resolved, and on the whole the network is prepared for transition to IPv6.
The experts believe that the World IPv6 Day will help promote traffic over IPv6, as well as give a boost to a number of online resources available on this protocol. And although some major providers plan to provide direct access to IPv6 for only 24 hours, many content providers can continue to operate the dual stack of Ipv6 and Ipv4 on their websites. This happened after national IPv6 days in the past, and, according to experts, the same will happen after the World IPv6 Day.
