Major Internet service providers (ISPs), home
networking equipment manufacturers, and web companies
around the world are coming together to permanently
enable IPv6 for their products and services by 6 June
2012.
Organized by the Internet Society, and building on the
one-day World IPv6 Day event held on 8 June 2011,
World IPv6 Launch represents a major milestone in the
global deployment of IPv6. As the successor to the
current Internet Protocol, IPv4, IPv6 is critical to
the Internet's continued growth as a platform for
innovation and economic development.
"The fact that leading companies across several
industries are making significant commitments to
participate in World IPv6 Launch is yet another
indication that IPv6 is no longer a lab experiment;
it's here and is an important next step in the
Internet's evolution," commented Leslie Daigle, the
Internet Society's Chief Internet Technology Officer.
"And, as there are more IPv6 services, it becomes
increasingly important for companies to accelerate
their own deployment plans."
ISPs participating in World IPv6 Launch will enable
IPv6 for enough users so that at least 1% of their
wireline residential subscribers who visit
participating websites will do so using IPv6 by 6 June
2012. These ISPs have committed that IPv6 will be
available automatically as the normal course of
business for a significant portion of their
subscribers. Committed ISPs are:
AT&T
Comcast
Free Telecom
Internode
KDDI
Time Warner Cable
XS4ALL
Participating home networking equipment manufacturers
will enable IPv6 by default through the range of their
home router products by 6 June 2012. Committed
equipment manufacturers are:
Cisco
D-Link
Web companies participating in World IPv6 Launch will
enable IPv6 on their main websites permanently
beginning 6 June 2012. Inaugural participants are:
Facebook (www.facebook.com)
Google (www.google.com)
Microsoft Bing (www.bing.com)
Yahoo! (www.yahoo.com)
Content delivery network providers Akamai and
Limelight will be enabling their customers to join
this list of participating websites by enabling IPv6
throughout their infrastructure.
IPv4 has approximately four billion IP addresses (the
sequence of numbers assigned to each
Internet-connected device). The explosion in the
number of people, devices, and web services on the
Internet means that IPv4 is running out of space.
IPv6, the next-generation Internet protocol which
provides more than 340 trillion, trillion, trillion
addresses, will connect the billions of people not
connected today and will help ensure the Internet can
continue its current growth rate indefinitely.