June 7, 2011 at 07:30Soon all Google services will be available through IPv6
- Transfer
Back in January, we joined the Internet Society and several leading Internet companies to announce IPv6 World Day. The announcement will be a call for the adoption of a new Internet protocol. In less than six months, we have grown to 400 organizations . We believe that IPv6 is the only long-term solution to the IPv4 address depletion problem, and its deployment is critical to the continued growth of the open Internet.
Starting from this moment, during 24 hours, at midnight on June 8 (Tuesday afternoon in the USA, on Wednesday morning in Asia), all members of the society will include IPv6 support on their websites. For us, this will mean almost all of our services, including Search, Gmail, YouTube and much more.
You will not even notice the transition. Most (99.95%) people will have access to services without any problems: either they will connect via IPv6, or their systems will be successfully returned to IPv4. However, like any next-generation technology, it can be quite painful in transition. According to our estimates, 0.05% of systems may not return to IPv4, so for some people Google, Facebook, Yahoo, Bing and others may open slowly or be inaccessible. This may be caused by improperly configured or incorrect network equipment.
Over the past few months, we and other industry players have been preparing hard. Operating system vendors and browser vendors released updates to resolve possible IPv6 connectivity issues, for example, Google Chrome now includes workarounds for IPv6 network problems, and we watched router manufacturers who tested their devices for reliable IPv6 support. For our part, we worked a lot, adding IPv6 support to services that do not yet have it, and fixed minor problems associated with this. And since the best way to find errors in their services is to "knock them with a hammer yourself," therefore, for Google employees, the "World IPv6 Day" mode has been working for several months.
We also thought about how best to warn those who might have problems. Therefore, we made notifications in a Google search, directing us to a test page and a reference article . If you're interested, you can check your connection at ipv6test.google.com .
Starting from this moment, during 24 hours, at midnight on June 8 (Tuesday afternoon in the USA, on Wednesday morning in Asia), all members of the society will include IPv6 support on their websites. For us, this will mean almost all of our services, including Search, Gmail, YouTube and much more.
You will not even notice the transition. Most (99.95%) people will have access to services without any problems: either they will connect via IPv6, or their systems will be successfully returned to IPv4. However, like any next-generation technology, it can be quite painful in transition. According to our estimates, 0.05% of systems may not return to IPv4, so for some people Google, Facebook, Yahoo, Bing and others may open slowly or be inaccessible. This may be caused by improperly configured or incorrect network equipment.
Over the past few months, we and other industry players have been preparing hard. Operating system vendors and browser vendors released updates to resolve possible IPv6 connectivity issues, for example, Google Chrome now includes workarounds for IPv6 network problems, and we watched router manufacturers who tested their devices for reliable IPv6 support. For our part, we worked a lot, adding IPv6 support to services that do not yet have it, and fixed minor problems associated with this. And since the best way to find errors in their services is to "knock them with a hammer yourself," therefore, for Google employees, the "World IPv6 Day" mode has been working for several months.
We also thought about how best to warn those who might have problems. Therefore, we made notifications in a Google search, directing us to a test page and a reference article . If you're interested, you can check your connection at ipv6test.google.com .