IPv6 Day: Kicking the tires of a next-gen Net today
The computing industry has begun a major 24-hour test today to work the kinks out of IPv6, a disruptive but necessary overhaul of the Internet's inner workings.
Starting at midnight, Universal Coordinated Time on June 8--or 5 p.m. PT today--dozens of companies lit up servers, Web sites, and network infrastructure that communicate using Internet Protocol version 6. The test, called World IPv6 Day, provides a bit of deadline, albeit one that's more artificial and less pressing than the Y2K bug's January 1, 2000, zero hour.
Unfortunately, the IPv6 test could disrupt the Net for some people who have badly configured hardware or software, with a Web site taking more than two minutes to load instead of a few seconds. Fortunately, though, the problem probably won't affect very many people, and the test will help identify any trouble spots.
Yahoo estimates 0.05 percent of visitors to its Web site will see very slow response when their computers request IPv6 information that can't actually be received. That's a tiny percentage, but multiplied by Yahoo's huge traffic, it's still something like 30,000 to 50,000 people a day, said Adam Bechtel, the vice president for Yahoo's Infrastructure Group, who's overseeing the company's IPv6 transition.
"It is significant. We have been notifying users," for example, by adding a notice on the Yahoo home page to notify users if their network connection may be broken, Bechtel said. "We've had over a million hits to our IPv6 help page." What will the network look like for those who are affected?
