The core fabric of the internet, the IP address received a major overhaul today. The IP Address which had just enough room for 4.3 billion unique addresses was running out of room, but as of today, there is now 340 undecillion (thats 340 trillion 1036th power) IPv6 Goes Live

The change is prompted by the fact the internet under the IPv4 system is running out of internet addresses. There simply is not enough for the growing demand of consumers devices. At some point, under the IPv4 system, new devices simply would not be able to get online, eCommerce and secure websites would grind to a halt as they to require an ip address.

Under IPv4, ip address structure was like this: xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx, with each “xxx” able to go from 0 to 256. IPv6 expands that so each “x” can be a 0 through 9 or “a” through “f,” and it’s structured like this: xxxx:xxxx:xxxx:xxxx:xxxx:xxxx:xxxx:xxxx.

Further IPv6 gives techies and web programmers finer grained control over application services, as IPv6  allows for application tuning at the network level without need of sophisticated equipment, unlike IPv4

While major network operators and websites such as Google, Comcast, Verizon, AT&T,  Facebook, Timewarner, Bing,  Microsoft, Netflix all have enabled IPv6

It will take years for the adoption of IPv6, as many older devices and operating systems do not support it, including Windows 2003 / Windows XP. So it may take a few more years to roll out, but it will coexist for now with IPv4