June 6 has arrived, it may seem like any other day to you, but it is a big day for the major ISPs, network operators, kit-makers and web companies; they have called it “world IPv6 launch day“. This is the event for the final switch from Ipv4 to IPv6, the new generation internet protocol.
Just like phone numbers are allotted for the phones to make calls, the internet connected people get a unique number known as ‘IP address’ to stay connected to the global network. The ultimate purpose of launching IPv6 is to allow trillions of users to have their own IP addresses, as a few billions were permitted by the Ipv4 standard. There would not be a problem of IP address shortage with IPv6.
There was a risk that internet might collapse and we all might get the day off work. Evidently, this did not happen, thanks to Google, Yahoo, Facebook, Akamai and many other tech heavyweights to welcome aboard the IPv6 launch. Enabling the IPv6 permanently is necessary to keep the internet open and working for all the existing users and ensuring more people to stay connected online as the number of users and devices continue to increase day by day. Internet needs more IP addresses, Ipv4 was running out of free addresses, thus all the major web companies united to redefine the global internet.
Google believes that this internet protocol is vital to get continued growth in the internet industry. Can you imagine that this newly launched Internet protocol can handle 340 trillion trillion trillion (340,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000) IP addresses. IPv6 (Internet’s new piping) can offer everyone on earth to get his own IP address.
Many of you might be thinking that is there anything new with the internet connections that we are talking about. But, as far as user experience is concerned, it would be same as earlier. There would be a difference in the set of numbers in the IP addresses, earlier there were four sets of numbers and IPv6 will assign six sets of numbers in the IP addresses from today onwards. This move is really large that won’t get exhausted any time soon.
