Facebook, Google Getting Ready For The Second Internet

On June 8 several major web companies including Microsoft, Google, Facebook and Yahoo will participate in World IPv6 Day. The event sponsored by the Internet Society will test flight IPv6, an upgrade to IPv4 which is becoming to be overloaded. The purpose of the 24 hour test is to motivate other companies using the Internet to transition and adapt their services and products to the IPv6.

IPv6 stands for Internet Protocol version 6, an increment to IPv4 which is the current public communication protocol being used globally but IPv4 is now running out of address space due to the ever expanding Internet. It can be installed just like any software in order to connect to the Internet and can also work with IPv4 without any special tools or manipulations.

Lynn St. Amour, president and CEO of Internet Society stated on IPv6 Forum.com," The Internet is for everyone. IPv6 represents the next stage of the Internet's evolution".

John Chambers, chairman of the board and CEO of Cisco Systems, Inc outlines Cisco's commitment to IPv6 by listing its benefits which include:


- Simplified packet header for routing efficiency.

-Mandatory IP Security (IPSec) implementation for all IPv6 devices. -Improved support for mobile IP and mobile computing devices.

-Enhanced multicast support with increased addresses and efficient mechanisms.

There are only 6% remaining of the domain name bandwidth for web addresses (IPv4 addresses) and they are expected to be exhausted by March 2012. The advent of the second Internet, IPv6, will be the remedy because there will be no more running out of web addresses.

According to Wikipedia the current first internet (IPv4) could allocate 4,294,967,296 addresses while IPv6 can support 340 undecillion addresses. Imagine that!