Web warning
To raise awareness that web addresses could run out this year, Facebook and Google will switch on a new way of running websites for one day in June.
A whole bunch of web giants will switch on IPv6 for the day on 8 June, The Daily Telegraph reported. Just 0.2 percent of web users have access to the system that is designed to stop the world from running out of web addresses and the promotional day aims to encourage IPv6's adoption.
HEXUS has previously reported that web founding father Vint Cerf has warned about the problem and is leading the campaign for ISPs and IT managers to make the switch from IPv4 to IPv6.
IPv6 reportedly offers trillions of web addresses but there is a problem as addresses cannot be accessed from modems and routers that use IPv4. It is thought that new web addresses will let devices such as tablets as well as more mundane objects gain web addresses so in the future a cork in a wine bottle could tell someone where it is and when to drink wine via a web address, for example.
Lorenzo Colitti, network engineer at Google, reportedly said that Google has been supporting IPv6 since early 2008 and since then has added support for the new system to YouTube.
While he apparently said Google would join Facebook, Yahoo and others in the promotional day in June, he added: "Our current measurements suggest that the vast majority (99.95 percent) of users will be unaffected."
He reportedly warned that some users might have connectivity problems or troublesome home network devices in rare cases, on the day.
