Understanding IPv6 and What’s Google Doing About it

ReadWriteWeb published an interesting article two days back on how the internet could run out of IP addresses in just one year. The reason? There are a limited number of IPv4 addresses (the current format of IP addresses) available and it is likely to be exhausted completely in a year.

So what’s the solution? I’m sure most of you’ve heard about this – IPv6. That’s the answer to all IP address woes. It is the next generation internet protocol that needs to be implemented quickly and efficiently across the entire internet infrastructure in order to overcome the upcoming IP address shortage.

It’s important that all the major players in the web content game adapt to this new technology as soon as possible. Since we talk about Google on this site, we will spare the others and focus on how Google is adapting to IPv6.

Google supports the transition to IPv6 and believes that it is essential for the internet to run smoothly in the coming decades. It has a dedicated IPv6 page where it provides all the information on accessing Google services over this new protocol.

The page talks about how Google provides services over IPv6. In fact, if your network supports this protocol, you could access Google search over IPv6 on ipv6.google.com.

Google is slowly making its services IPv6 compatible. In their own words:

“Google services available currently include Google search (including image search, blog search and code search), Alerts, Docs, Finance, Gmail, Health, iGoogle, News, Reader, Picasa Web Albums, Maps, YouTube, and App Engine applications on appspot.com. We’ll be adding new services in the future, though, so check back often.”

I hope IPv6 can be successfully implemented across the web so that we continue to see new websites and online services. ( Image courtesy – tnarik )