Although the average web user won’t notice a difference, Wednesday marks a major milestone in the history of the Internet. Several major ISPs and tech companies have officially enabled IPv6 addresses for their products and services, including AT&T, Google, Facebook, Cisco, Comcast and Yahoo. For the uninitiated, IPv6 is a next-generation Internet layer protocol that was designed by the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) to create a virtually limitless number of new IP addresses once the world had run out of addresses on the most widely-used Internet layer protocol, IPv4. While IPv4 has a fixed limit of around 4 billion IP addresses, IPv6 has exponentially more, on the magnitude of around 340 billion billion billion billion (3.4×1038). At any rate, the Internet Society is hosting a virtual IPv6 launch party on Wednesday, complete with video tributes to the new protocol from tech bigwigs such as Cisco CEO John Chambers.
IPv6 goes live
Updated Dec 19th, 2018 8:26PM EST
If you buy through a BGR link, we may earn an affiliate commission, helping support our expert product labs.
Brad Reed has written about technology for over eight years at BGR.com and Network World. Prior to that, he wrote freelance stories for political publications such as AlterNet and the American Prospect. He has a Master's Degree in Business and Economics Journalism from Boston University.
More
Latest News
