The Imperial website will be involved in a worldwide test on 8 June to trial the next phase of the Internet – ‘World IPv6 Day’. This twenty-four hour test window is being organised by the Internet Society to assist with preparations for the impending exhaustion of the world’s available Internet Protocol (IP) addresses – the network addresses used by computers and other devices for communication over the internet.
The solution to the depleted pool of IP addresses is the IPv6 network protocol which will gradually replace the existing version of IP and support a virtually unlimited number of devices on the Internet. The transition to IPv6 is underway and on 8 June Google, Facebook, Yahoo and many universities and other organisations will offer their content over to IPv6, creating conditions that expose internet users to IPv6 on a larger scale than ever before to reveal problems that may occur.
The main Imperial website will be taking part in the trial.