Posted: 27th Jul, 2004 By: MarkJ
Japan (.jp) and Korea (.kr), followed later by France (.fr), will be among the first recipients of domain names based off the new IPv6 standard. The IP of a connection governs a systems online identity; most of the world is still IPv4 based (e.g: 123.10.93.201):
The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers said this week that it's ready to start assigning IP addresses and domain names using the latest version of Internet Protocol.
At a meeting in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, this week, ICANN, which is in charge of allocating IP addresses, said that it has added the latest version of Internet protocol version 6 (IPv6) to the Internet's Domain Name Servers (DNS) root server system.
IP addresses direct information packets across the Internet to the correct servers. The current IPv4 uses 32-bit addresses (usually represented, for instance, as 123.45.67.89), and eventually there won't be enough to meet demand. IPv6 uses longer 128-bit addresses -- thus providing more possible addresses. Until ICANN's root DNS servers can understand those longer addresses, they can't locate them. DNS servers, deployed throughout the Internet, keep track of IP addresses and domain names. Now businesses and individuals who want to sign up for an IPv6 service will be able to communicate with people using IPv4 addresses.The
ZDNet item notes this as being the first real step towards making IPv6 a useful protocol, although IPv4 is likely to exist alongside for some years to come.