World IPv6 day is a “test flight” for IPv6 across the internet, with large networks such as Google, Facebook, Yahoo!, Akamai, and many others taking part to test IPv6 connectivity across a period of 24 hours.  This is to help raise awareness and push network operators, OS vendors, software vendors, content providers, and other organisations which provide software or hardware that rely on the IP protocol to start supporting IPv6.

What is Crucial doing on World IPv6 Day?
Our main website (www.crucial.com.au) is now running full IPv6 support, as well as IPv4.  You can access this via the standard URL, or via ipv6.crucial.com.au. We have upgraded our core network to ensure full IPv6 in hardware, and on the network side we are fully ready to deploy IPv6 to end users.  On the software side of things, we are still pushing a few vendors to support IPv6 before we can support IPv6 across our entire product range.  In the meantime we will be offering IPv6 where we can!

If you don’t already know what IPv6 is, its the new IP addressing system that will be replacing IPv4.  It allows all devices connected to the internet to communicate with each other.  Due to the sheer number of devices running on the internet since its inception, the old IPv4 protocol does not have enough addresses to support the current number of devices.  Predictions point towards IPv4 running out in 1-2 years, and possibly even sooner in the APAC region!

IPv6 is not a drop in replacement for IPv4, and website and network operations may need to perform a variety of upgrades (software and hardware) to ensure their networks can support IPv6.

How does this effect me?
If you are running only IPv4 on your network, you will probably notice no impact on World IPv6 day.  If you are running IPv6, you may notice some issues due to a variety of reasons, however it is a great way to test out your IPv6 connectivity and see what type of issues you may encounter.

How can I test if my internet connection supports IPv6?
Easy, just visit this page!  http://test-ipv6.com/

What can you do to enable IPv6 support?
First step should be asking your ISP if they support IPv6, and if not you should push them towards supporting it as soon as possible.   If they do already support it, the next step is ensuring your router(s) support IPv6, and are configured to run IPv6.  Depending on the hardware you may either need to purchase new hardware, or update the software/firmware running on the routers.

Another less desirable option is to use a tunnel broker, this allows you to create a tunnel to an ISP which does support IPv6.  They will then provide you with an IPv6 allocation that you can use.  WARNING: If you are an Australian user and you use an overseas broker, you could find IPv6 access very slow!