Charter Communications is gearing up for next month's trial run of IPv6 addresses during World IPv6 Day. Charter, the nation's fourth-largest cable operator, said it would be enabling IPv6 access and transit services to select users throughout its footprint on June 8 during World IPv6 Day.
World IPv6 Day is the first global scale 24-hour test of IPv6. Sponsored by the Internet Society, the test will enable the industry to take a "test flight" in regard to IPv6 readiness and prepare for full deployment. Charter and other major service providers – including Time Warner Cable and Comcast – content providers and websites are joining forces to enable IPv6 Internet connection technology for 24 hours. Other participants include Google, Facebook, Akami and Limelight Networks.
"Users and applications of the Internet are rapidly growing, and IPv6 will enable Charter and our industry to continue to drive innovation," said Don Detampel, Charter's executive vice president of technology and president of commercial services. "The adoption of IPv6 requires a joint effort by the worldwide networking community, and we enthusiastically join with our customers, peers, partners, suppliers and competitors in working together to make this a success."Charter said it would approach full deployment of the IPv6 addresses next year.
While the migration to IPv6 has been in the works for years, the proliferation of IP devices on service providers' networks caused a further drain on the blocks of IPv4 addresses, the last of which were slated to run out this year. IPv6 consists of 128 bits, compared with 32 bits in IPv4, resulting in approximately 340 undecillion IPv6 addresses versus the 4.2 billion available through IPv4.