Network World - The Internet's biggest players -- including Facebook, Google, Yahoo and Bing -- are turning on IPv6 today as part of the World IPv6 Launch Day challenge coordinated by the Internet Society. But which websites are not ready to support the next-gen Internet Protocol?
Well, Twitter, for one. When asked about the real-time information sharing site's progress on IPv6 and why the company isn't participating in World IPv6 Launch Day, Twitter spokesman Robert Weeks said: "Twitter is looking to enable IPv6 as soon as we can." In the meantime, there is no IPv6-based access for Twitter, which has more than 100 million active users.
Other high-profile sites that aren't among the 3,000 participants in World IPv6 Launch Day are business-oriented social networking site LinkedIn, e-commerce giants Amazon and eBay, online reference Wikipedia, and classified advertising service Craigslist. Neither Tumblr nor Pinterest -- two popular image-sharing websites --- is participating in World IPv6 Launch Day. Nor is PayPal.
SLIDESHOW: Why the Internet needs IPv6
Indeed, of Alexa's Top 50 most popular websites in the United States, only 12 -- or 24% -- are listed as participants in World IPv6 Launch Day.
That means 76% of the 50 most popular U.S. websites aren't ready for IPv6 traffic.
"As far as the laggards are concerned, if they are not actively working on IPv6 then the only progress they are making is to make themselves irrelevant," said Owen DeLong, IPv6 evangelist and director of professional services at Hurricane Electric, a leading IPv6 service provider.
"I understand that there are naysayers out there, but as of the sixth of June, IPv6 will be deployed," said Leslie Daigle, chief Internet technology officer at the Internet Society. "With 50 participating network access providers enabling IPv6 for 1% of their subscribers on June 6, that will be a big enough percentage of Internet traffic to catch the attention of business decision-makers."
World IPv6 Launch Day is a voluntary event designed to bring momentum to IPv6, the long-anticipated upgrade to the Internet's main communications protocol, which is called IPv4. IPv6 is needed because the Internet is running out of addresses with IPv4. Asia ran out of unassigned IPv4 addresses last year, Europe is expected to deplete its supply this summer, and North America's will expire next year.
BACKGROUND: Rehearsals over, IPv6 goes prime time June 6
IPv4 uses 32-bit addresses and can support 4.3 billion devices connected directly to the Internet. IPv6 uses 128-bit addresses and can connect up a virtually unlimited number of devices: 2 to the 128th power. Deployment of IPv6 has been hampered by the fact that it is not backward compatible with IPv4. So network operators must either deploy both protocols in what's called dual-stack mode or translate between them, which adds latency and cost.
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