Comcast, Time Warner Cable Sign-on for 24 hours of test IPv6

Illustration: Jack GallagherComcast and Time Warner Cable have joined the multitude of vendors that are participating in the IPv6 world, a 24-hour Internet protocol next-generation next June 8.

BACKGROUND: Facebook, Google, Yahoo, commit to IPv6 Day trial worlds

Participants in the world day of IPv6 are needed to support native IPv6 traffic on their websites in front of the public along with the current standard, known as IPv4.

"IPv6 Day-Worldwide-who is going to be a very important day," says John Brzozowski, Chief Architect for IPv6 and distinguished engineer at Comcast, which has an ongoing process at national level of IPv6. "Anybody participating will test before the world day of IPv6, which will help awareness and availability of unity".

Other notable participants in the world day of IPv6 include Google, Yahoo, Facebook, Akamai, Limelight Networks, Cisco, Juniper Research service and Microsoft Bing. Hosting service providers and Rackspace have SoftLayer technologies signed for testing IPv6, Mozilla browser maker and DNS appliance vendor BlueCat Networks.

Verizon Business and Blue Coat Systems say they will participate in the world officially IPv6 but have not yet signed up yet.

The growing list of participants of the world day of IPv6 is another sign of the market momentum around IPv6, which suddenly became the network update for carriers and enterprises more significant over the years.

Network providers are jumping on the bandwagon world day of IPv6 because they are anxious to demonstrate to their clients--especially the u.s. military--they don't just "talk talk", but are willing to "walk the walk" when it comes to distribute their IPv6 products.

IPv6 is a required update because the Internet is running out of IP addresses using the standard 40-year-old IPv4.

BY THE numbers: The evolution of the Internet

The free pool of IPv4 addresses not assigned was sold out two weeks ago, when the regional Internet registries that receives their final assignment by the Internet Assigned Numbers Authority (IANA). The records shall be kept at dole most of the remaining IPv4 address for the next three to six months.

The Internet is running out of IPv4 addresses as IPv4 uses 32-bit addresses and can support only 4.3 billion devices connected directly to the Internet. However, IPv6 uses 128-bit addresses and supports a virtually unlimited number of devices--2 to power its 128th.

Politicians say network operators must upgrade to IPv6 in order to support the billions of other people in the world who want to connect to the Internet through mobile phones, PCs, game consoles or other devices. Today, the Internet has around 2 billion people, compared to a total world population topping 6 billion.

The goal of the world day of IPv6 is to encourage the creation of IPv6-based content, and to check availability of the new standard for use at high volume. Test participants wish to find out how common it is for network equipment to end-users be misconfigured and unable to support IPv6, an issue of industry calls IPv6 brokenness.

"The most important thing is for companies to allow their public facing IPv6 to the Web Server," says John Curran, President and CEO of the American Registry for Internet numbers. "Once you've done that, you can provide the same connectivity to your customers if they have an IPv4 address or an IPv6 address. Until you've done, your customers will see unknown IPv6 to your site. If you can do so by June 8, you can participate in all the tests on the operation of IPv6. "

Read more on the lan and wan LAN & WAN section of the network in the world.

For more information on the corporate network, go to NetworkWorld. Story copyright 2010 Network World Inc. All rights reserved.