On June 8th, as previously reported by Neowin and other sites, hundreds of web sites participated in a 24-hour trial of IPv6. The new version allows practically unlimited IP addresses and better performance compared to IPv4. According to Ars Technica, the test day went smoothly for users. However, sites did have some problems.
One mobile operator in Europe had issues with their website. Apparently, the CEO learned about the World IPv6 Day 24 hours before the event. He instructed his engineers to make the switch, leading to the site being unreachable for most of the day after efforts failed.
Facebook got its IPv6 address a few minutes before midnight Zulu Time and remained unreachable for a few minutes. Facebook disappeared from the DNS again, then came back half an hour later. Facebook had no further issues. Depending on the DNS caching of the servers involved, the operating system, and applications used, updates took anywhere from a few minutes to half an hour or more.
It seems safe to say that adding IPv6 addresses to websites does not kill the Internet. Some participants, such as www.xbox.com, have decided to keep their IPv6 addresses. An obvious next step would be to get more native IPv6 on the ground to consumers. That will not be easy, but keeping IPv4 will not be feasible when the addresses have run out.
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