IPv6 day is on the 8th June 2011, this year. You would not know it though. Coursing through the Internet reveals a myriad of broken links for many an IPv6 Tunnel Broker – a testimony to how many free Tunnel Broker services have shutdown over the last 12 months.
Meanwhile, ISPs seem to be dragging their feet in announcing any sort of IPv6 service to end-users. At least that is certainly the case here in Spain and from what I can see, throughout Europe.
Currently, the large service providers, such as Google and Facebook, offer us only IPv6 modified URLs (e.g. ipv6.google.com and www.v6.facebook.com) to access their pages. They are in dread of adding IPv6 DNS records to their IPv4 domain names in case they break, or add delays to, their user’s access to their content. Others, such as Yahoo, have proposed only giving IPv6 addresses over IPv6, leaving IPv6 queries over IPv4 out in the cold.
The IPv4 pool has now been exhausted. IPv4 addresses will only be had at a premium. The time for IPv6 is now overdue. What can a simple mortal do against such indifference, apathy, fear, uncertainty and doubt?
One answer is to stay off the net on IPv6 day. Go out and enjoy the summer sunshine. That way you won’t have to suffer the headaches of whatever goes wrong when major service providers turn on IPv6, for their primary Internet domain presence. And don’t think that you can weather the 24-hour tempest by using just IPv4. It won’t necessarily keep you safe. If you follow this course of action, you can return on the day after happy in the knowledge that, after IPv6 day, the luddites will switch back to IPv4-only.
However, if you are brave and possibly as foolhardy, you can revisit your IPv6 connectivity and join in the fun. There appears to at least one tunnel broker that may yet provide some relief to the unfortunate, namely HE.net (Hurricane.Electric Internet Services). I shall be trying out their services in due course and I will report back here.
