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Facebook, Google Participating In Internet Protocol Upgrade Test

Wednesday, hundreds of the world's largest Internet companies participated in the first test of a critical upgrade to the infrastructure for the the World Wide Web.  One of the Web's key layers is the Internet Protocol, which is a global communications standard that links together devices around the world.  Every device that connects to the Internet, be it a PC, a mobile phone, or a tablet computer, is assigned a unique IP address.  Wednesday's experiment involves an upgrade from the old IPv4 system, which is running out of IP addresses, to IPv6.

Ipv4 has the capacity to handle 4.3 billion addresses, and the last of those were handed out in February.  The solution: IPv6, which uses longer IP designations, allowing for substantially more addresses.  Just as the U.S. telephone system has dealt with expansion by increasing the size of phone numbers, IPv6 will use longer IP addresses to deal with the growth of the Internet.  And the difference will be astounding.  Whereas IPv4 could handle 3.4 billion unique IPs, IPv6 will be able to handle 340 undecillion of them.  That's 34 followed by 37 zeros, enough unique IP addresses for every human on Earth to have trillions of devices linked to the Net.

Wednesday is the first step of integrating the new protocol, a process that will be quite complicated.  The two systems are essentially parallel, independent networks.  Internet service providers, operating system developers and website operators have been working for several years on the complex technical changes that will be needed to make the switch.   Beginning at 8PM ET, more than 400 websites around the world, including Facebook, Google and Yahoo, will switch their websites over to IPv6 delivery.  If the test is a success, users will not notice a thing.

Planning for World IPv6 Day began last year through the Internet Society, an organization that sets global standards for the Internet.  Internet service providers have been ready to support IPv6 for some time, but it would have been an empty gesture without IPv6 content for users to view.  Insiders estimate that Wednesday's experiment will meet with tremendous success, with only a small fraction of users experiencing issues.

Google wrote in a blog earlier this week:  “The vast majority (99.95%) of people will be able to access services without interruption: either they'll connect over IPv6, or their systems will successfully fall back to IPv4.  However, as with any next-generation technology, there may be teething pains. We estimate that .05% of systems may fail to fall back to IPv4, so some people may find Google, Facebook, Yahoo, Bing and other participating websites slow or unresponsive on World IPv6 Day.”