6UK

Many companies supported the World IPv6 Day in June 2011, temporarily making their services available over IPv6 as well as business as normal over IPv4. The day was considered a success, or in the Register’s inimitable expression “World IPv6 Day fails to kill the internet“!

This year, the day is 6th June 2012, and the plan this time is for many participating companies to leave the IPv6 service enabled. It’s IPv6 Launch Day.

Business as normal from 6th June 2012 is to run IPv4 and IPv6 together. In the jargon of network engineers, business as normal is dual stacked.

Organised by the Internet Society, leading advocates of world IPv6 launch day include Google, Facebook, Microsoft, Yahoo, Cisco and AT&T. Things seem a little quieter on the UK front beyond the 6UK membership, but do let us know if your organisation intends to enable IPv6 in June, or indeed any time soon.

Computing.co.uk reports a supportive statement from Leslie Daigle, the Internet Society’s Chief Internet Technology Officer:

“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. And, as there are more IPv6 services, it becomes increasingly important for companies to accelerate their own deployment plans.”