DENIC will be actively involved when the Internet of the future is tested throughout the world on 8 June 2011. The global Internet community has arranged the so-called World IPv6 Day to draw attention to the launch of the Internet protocol version 6, in short IPv6, and enhance the community's readiness to make available and use all kinds of services via IPv6. The event is initiated by Facebook, Yahoo, Akamai and Google: Together with numerous other web and Internet service providers as well as hardware and operating system producers they will apply the two protocols IPv4 and IPv6 in parallel on that day. This so-called dual-stack operation also is the intended mode for a smooth transition from the old to the new protocol. Moreover, it shall help to identify potential difficulties operating systems, networks, routers and applications may face when run under IPv6.

DENIC takes part in this general real-world test and makes available all web and mail services as well as the public information services whois and Domaincheck (DCHK) via IPv6. On 8 June 2011, the services will be offered in parallel under IPv4 and IPv6.

DENIC has supported the introduction of IPv6 in the DNS already since the end of 2003, when the first name server with an IPv6 address was set up. In July 2004, this IPv6 name server was recorded in the root zone. Since 31 May 2011, you may also store NSentries with IPv6 addresses for domains in addition to the glue records for IPv6 name servers, which can be registered since 2010. Whilst the DENIC services listed in the beginning will be made available particularly for the action day, the option of storing AAAA record entries will be maintained beyond that day. Thus, DENIC has taken another step towards fully supporting IPv6 in the .de zone.

DENIC will use the comprehensive test run to monitor its systems' behaviour. The resulting findings will help to guarantee reliable operation under IPv6 in the production environment in the near future.

About IPv6

When the Internet was still in its infancy, the pool of about 4.3 billion available IPv4 addresses seemed to be inexhaustible. The then unforeseen rapid growth of the Internet has shown that we were wrong. On 1 February 2011 the day had come: IANA allocated the last IPv4 address blocks. According to conservative estimates, this stock will take us more or less to the end of this year. And then? Then the new Internet protocol IPv6 generation is wanted. It will bring about the enormous number of 340 sextillion (2 to the power of 128) IP addresses. The vision of the “Internet everywhere” is about to materialize. Every household appliance may soon get its own IP address. Actually, the new protocol is not all that new: IETF drew up IPv6 as early as 1994. To make obvious the extraordinary development leap, version 5 was simply omitted. Besides the larger address space, the essential novelties are the simplified header format, the improved support of extensions, the simplified routing and the improved quality-of-service as well as the advanced security. From the very beginning, migration from IPv4 to IPv6 has been planned to be performed smoothly. Both protocols will thus be applied simultaneously for a not yet limited transition period.