IPv6 is here: the Internet has just evolved again!

The Internet as we know it has changed. Internet Protocol Version 6 (IPv6) went live with tech companies like Google, Facebook, Bing.com, Google.com, Gmail.com, and YouTube.com offering IPv6. So why is IPv6 important and why should you care? IPv6 is a big step up from the Internet Protocol Version 4. The IPv4 is your IP address, which is made up of a sequence of four sets of numbers. The IP address is what allows communication between different devices. However due to the ever-growing usage of the Internet, the number of sequences in IPv4 has been exhausted. The solution was seen as IPv6 which would use a set of six numbers to allocate new addresses to users. As PCWorld reports, IPv6 uses 128-bit addresses and is capable of 340 undecillion addresses. That is 340 times 10 to the 36th power, or 340 trillion trillion trillion possible IP addresses. That’s a a lot of IP addresses indeed. [caption id=“attachment_335355” align=“alignleft” width=“380” caption=“IPv6 website. Screengrab”]  [/caption] Most computers with Windows 7 and higher do have an option for IPv6 but because most service providers still use IPv4. SO IPv6 is just an option for now. CNET reports that, “Jason Fesler, Yahoo’s IPv6 evangelist, estimated that for sites that offer content over IPv6, about half a percent of data will actually be delivered using it. But that should rapidly increase as the months go by: In a year, the fraction should be “in the realm of 10 to 15 percent.” IPv6 launch participants including Microsoft, Facebook, Google, and Yahoo started permanently sharing content from their main Web sites using IPv6, and companies like Comcast started connecting a fraction of their customers with IPv6. According to a Telegraph report, the Indian government announced that by December all its websites would switch over to IPv6. Hopefully Indian subscribers will start making the switch to IPv6 soon.