Consumer ISP PlusNet UK, which claims to offer "broadband that won't be beat on price" (standalone services), has announced that 25 of its customers will be given the chance to trial IPv6 as part of its commitment to the 24-hour worldwide "test flight" organised by the Internet Society (ISOC) on Wednesday 8th June 2011 (World IPv6 Day).

Current Internet Protocol - IPv4 - addresses are set to run out in the very near future and as a result World IPv6 Day was setup by ISOC to encourage other broadband ISPs, web companies and hardware makers to prepare their services for the necessary transition to IPv6 .


PlusNet claims that the industry's biggest challenge is to make both platforms compatible (e.g. dual-stack) so that web users have access to sites running off both IPv4 and IPv6 with the hardware capable of hosting each version.

Sadly such work does cost money and a large number of providers have been very slow to adapt. In fairness one of the biggest problems has been the lack of IPv6 support in consumer hardware, such as broadband routers. This is now being addressed but progress is still painfully slow.