June 6th has arrived, which means that participating ISPs, hardware manufacturers and search engines must stick to their word and permanently enable the IPv6 address system -- not least as an encouragement for others to do the same. The ultimate purpose? To allow trillions of users to have their own IP address, instead of just a paltry few billion permitted by the IPv4 standard that continues to run in parallel. The risk? That the Internet collapses and we all get the day off work. Evidently that hasn't happened, no doubt thanks to Google and others having tested the system during pilot programs, and indeed Vint Cerf's explanatory video seems to be working fine after the break.

Continue reading IPv6 lands today, do you copy?

IPv6 lands today, do you copy? originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 06 Jun 2012 03:47:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.