The internet gets an upgrade for World IPv6 Day

Today is World IPv6 Day, the 24-hour period in which web giants including Google and Facebook switch over to a new networking protocol. It's hardly a riveting topic and if it all goes to plan you shouldn't notice a thing, so why should you care? Because the internet is running out of addresses - and that's even before we start networking our fridges and hair-dryers.

Here's how it works at the moment: when you type a web address like www.newscientist.com in to your browser it gets converted into an internet protocol (IP) address, which in our case is 146.101.117.95. This is an Internet Protocol Version 4 (IPv4) address, one of the 232 or 4,294,967,296 possible addresses.

You might think 4.3 billion addresses would be enough for anyone, but it quite literally isn't, as it's not even enough for the world's population to have one each. So in 1998 the Internet Engineering Task Force laid out a new standard called IPv6, which uses much longer addresses such as 2001:0db8:85a3:0000:0000:8a2e:0370:7334. This lengthier scheme can accommodate 2128 addresses, or 3.4 x 1038 (or even 340 trillion trillion trillion, if you prefer).

The new addresses use the hexadecimal numbering system, in which the letters A to F represent the numbers 10 to 15, which has allowed some companies to have a little fun - Facebook can be reached at 2620:0:1c08:4000:face:b00c:0:1.

Problem solved then? Unfortunately not, since online providers have been slow to adopt the new standard, and the vast majority of internet equipment still uses IPv4 addresses. That's why the Internet Society has organised World IPv6 Day, allowing the big providers to test out their new IPv6 equipment and encourage others to make the switch.

So far the event seems to have gone off without a hitch and internet services firm Akamai shows a strong rise in IPv6 usage. The internet society expects that 0.05 per cent of users may experience some connectivity problems, and you can test your readiness at sites like test-ipv6.com.

Even if World IPv6 Day is a success, it's not clear that we'll be switching off IPv4 any time soon. That's a shame, because IPv6 has the potential to enable the "internet of things", in which every device from kitchen appliances to beauty products has its own network address.

If you think the iPad is impressive, wait until you're downloading apps for your oven...
By Jacob Aron