Next-generation internet addresses tested

A worldwide test was under way last week of the next generation of internet addresses designed to replace the dwindling pool of 4.3 billion unique identifiers in the original system.

Hundreds of companies, organisations and institutions around the world took part in “World IPv6 Day,” including internet giants such as Facebook, Google, Microsoft and Yahoo!

Internet Protocol version 6 is the new system of unique identifying numbers for websites, computers and other internet-connected gadgets and is replacing the original addressing system, IPv4, which is nearing exhaustion.

IPv6 provides more than four billion times more addresses than IPv4 –more addresses, for example, than there are grains of sand on Earth.

The number of available IPv4 addresses will run out later this year and the transition to IPv6 is needed to keep pace with the explosive growth in internet use.

US networking company Cisco forecast in a report released this month that the number of devices connected to the internet will top more than 15 billion by the year 2015, more than double the world’s population.

Web users, for the most part, will be oblivious to the switch to IPv6 since an IP address such as 74.125.71.103, for example, will still appear in the address bar as google.com.

Facebook network engineer Donn Lee said World IPv6 Day “will enable the industry to gain insights about potential IPv6 issues, find solutions, and accelerate global adoption of IPv6.”

The change to IPv6 mainly impacts internet service providers, websites and network operators who have to make sure their systems can handle the new online addresses and properly route traffic.

The non-profit Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN), which manages the technical architecture of the web, doled out the last batches of IPv4 numbers in February.

ICANN has been calling for a switch to IPv6 for years but many websites and internet service providers have been clinging to the old standard.

Former ICANN chairman Vint Cerf, a Google vice president who is considered a “founding father” of the internet, has said he and other engineers did not imagine there would be a need for more addresses when they created the IPv4 protocol in 1977.