Has your business switched to new Internet protocol IPv6 yet?
Companies that haven’t should be rushing to get their Internet Service Providers (ISPs) and domain registrars to adopt the new protocol because space in the aging IPv4 is mere months away from depletion according to experts.
IPv4 which was developed in the very early days of the Internet uses 32-bit addresses and had not anticipated the explosive growth of Internet use that we see today.
“IPv4 addresses are depleting at an increasing rate. We’ll run our for certain sometime in 2011,” according to Paul Vixie, president of Internet Systems Consortium, a non-profit corporation dedicated to developing and maintaining production quality open source reference implementation of core Internet protocols.
Whereas IPv6 which uses 128-bit addresses has “nearly limitless space enough for 10 lifetimes,” Vixie said.
What does it mean if you fail to get into your Internet address into the new IPv6?
Well for starters, things are not going to suddenly go all black on your screen. You’ll still have Internet connection, but you’ll be blocked off from reaching other Internet users that are on IPv6, according to John Demco, co-founder of Webnames.ca, a Web hosting firm based in Vancouver, B.C. And for a business that could have some devastating effects because you lose out on connecting with a growing number of potential clients.
Demco and Vixie explain more in the video below:
[brightcove 621818986001]
Nestor Arellano is a senior writer for ITBusiness.ca. Follow Nestor on Twitter, read his blogs on ITBusiness.caBlogs. Check out ITBusiness.ca’s Facebook page