Comcast and Time Warner Cable plan to participate in World IPv6 Day
on June 8, joining more than two dozen other companies and organizations
in a 24-hour test run of the next-generation Internet protocol.
The event, coordinated by the not-for-profit Internet Society, comes after the last blocks of IPv4 addresses were doled out
to each of the five regional Internet number registries last month.
While the IPv4 address scheme provides about 4.3 billion unique
addresses -- which are expected to be allocated to service providers or
other networks before the end of 2011 -- IPv6 provides an astronomically
large number of addresses.
In January, Comcast initiated the first North American test of IPv6 running natively in a DOCSIS environment, with a group of cable modem users in Colorado. TWC expects to kick off its own tests this spring.
"World
IPv6 Day is important to further the deployment and wide spread
enablement of IPv6," John Brzozowski, Comcast distinguished engineer
and chief architect for IPv6, said in a statement. "Being able to test
our infrastructure at scale and verify our customers' experience is
essential to seamless enablement."
