New York -- Today is the World IPv6 day the day when hundreds of internet giants, including Facebook, Google, Akamai, Yahoo and Limelight Networks are amongst some of the major organisations participating in the first worldwide "test flight" of a major engineering upgrade to the Internet's infrastructure. The goal of the Test Flight Day is to motivate organizations across the industry – Internet service providers, hardware makers, operating system vendors and web companies – to prepare their services for IPv6 to ensure a successful transition as IPv4 addresses run out.

The solution is a next-generation protocol called IPv6. Just as the U.S. telephone system handled soaring growth by increasing the digits in each telephone number, the new IP system -- under development for more than 12 years -- uses longer addresses to fit more devices into the network.

For others it can be more challenging. It is easy to turn on IPv6 services but there are many differences between IPv4 and IPv6 that can lead to problems. Many assume that IPv6 is the same as IPv6, just with longer addresses. This is not the case. IPv6 has many differences, for example use of multicast, auto-configuration, transition mechanisms and support for new features such as mobility. In addition, the large number of Transition Mechanisms bring a great deal of additional complexity to IPv6. Therefore, when deploying IPv6 is it is important to understand the differences from IPv4 and learn the about the pitfalls and how to avoid them.

You can test your IPV6 Connectivity by clicking here.