It has taken awhile, but IPv4 is finally phasing out in favor of its newer brother, IPv6.

Every network-enabled device communicates with an IP address, and the IPv4 spec that has successfully served the Internet for so many years is running out of IPs since its 32-bit address apace can only accommodate about 4.3 billion IP addresses.

This depletion of IPv4 addresses has come as no surprise, and IPv6 has been developed to accommodate a much larger IP address pool. IPv6 uses a 128-bit address scheme, which means there is 600 quadrillion addresses for every square millimeter of the earth with IPv6, according to tw telecom (News - Alert). Or, as my TMCnet colleague likes to put it, “a massively larger number of addresses.”

The newer IPv6 also brings other benefits. It brings simplified headers, increased levels of addressing hierarchy, improved IP mobility support, simpler auto-configuration of addresses and enhanced security features—including encryption and authentication options in the form of Internet Protocol Security (IPsec).

Moving from IPv4 to IPv6 has taken some time, however, because the two protocols are not compatible with each other. That’s kind of a big problem, and part of why the transition has taken time; I remember talk about IPv6 back in my college days, and that is approaching a decade ago.

“IPv6 has been implemented gradually, and there are several transition technologies in play,” noted Henry Yu in a blog post for tw telecom, chief security architect for the firm. “Tunneling, for instance, is a protocol that preserves the underlying network while allowing newer IPv6 hosts and routers to communicate with each other in a way that's compatible with IPv4 hosts and routers.”

Another technology to help with the transition is dual-stack configuration, he noted, which allows IPv6 hosts and routers to be implemented in a way that supports both IPv4 and IPv6 protocols.

On June 8, 2011, World IPv6 Day saw the first global test of the newer protocol in the wild as websites with more than one billion combined visits per day (including tw telecom, Yahoo, Google, Facebook, and Microsoft (News - Alert)) joined forces with distribution companies to enable IPv6 on their main services for one day. Then last year, June 6, 2012, IPv6 officially launched. The protocol was made officially permanent and many providers switched over completely.

Just like the Y2K bug scare more than a decade ago, thoughtful preparation has made the transition pretty much seamless.

“IPv6 has been proven a success — because almost no one noticed the difference,” noted Yu. “Companies such as tw telecom and Facebook (News - Alert), for example, had no more customer care center inquiries than normal.”

That’s only because the transition has been taken seriously, however.

“IPv6 is available today and will become the industry-standard for addressing configuration,” according to tw telecom, which helps businesses move to the new address scheme. “If you haven’t yet begun to plan for the migration to IPv6, there’s no time like the present.”

The company adds, “IPv6 introduces a completely new way of Internet addressing. You’ll need to ensure complete network readiness and tw telecom can get you there, from the network layer—ranging from systems support, security policies, routing protocols—all the way up to enabling your business applications over IPv6. This transition will not happen overnight.”

So while deployment does incur time and expense, the transition is moving forward without any major hitches.