Bloomberg’s Successful IPv6 Test
June 09, 2011
Yesterday was world IPv6 day. For those of you who may not be completely familiar with IPv6 (Internet Protocol version 6), let me briefly explain. Believe it or not, we are actually on the verge of running out of Internet addresses due to the enormous growth of the World Wide Web. These IP addresses are assigned numbers to computers, printers, etc., and without them you cannot communicate or connect to the web.
Bloomberg maintains a strong focus on assessing the technical landscape and its evolution. On that front, we’ve watched this trend closely. While there has been good progress in recycling and reallocating the address space, the global move to IPv6 is now inevitable and underway.
We’ve launched dual-stacked (both IPv4 and IPv6 capable) and IPv6-only versions of the Bloomberg.com website and performed several tests. What we’ve found so far is that almost all of our readers have environments that are compatible with dual-stacked domains (99.95%). That’s great news, and it means that we’ll likely migrate our main site to a permanently dual-stacked configuration in the next few weeks!
So, what does this all really mean for you? It’s similar to adding new telephone prefixes — it shouldn’t affect you, but over time, having an IPv6 capable allows us to participate in the growth of the Internet with no hiccups or interruptions for you.
Andre Stechert heads Bloomberg.com’s R&D Team