Guide for Checking your IPv6 readiness

Below is a guide for home users and small business on how to check your devices and network for IPv6-readiness and what resources are out there for you:

Happy IPv6 Day!

Today, major technology players like Google, Facebook, Yahoo, YouTube, Cisco and others will take part in a 24-hour test flight of the next generation Internet protocol.

Internet Protocol version 6 - IPv6

The Internet's growth has created a need for more addresses than IPv4 (the one we're using these days) is capable of. IPv6 allows for vastly more numerical addresses. 

While IPv4 allows 32 bits for an Internet Protocol address, and can therefore support 2³² (4,294,967,296) addresses, IPv6 uses 128-bit addresses, so the new address space supports 2¹²⁸ (approximately 340 undecillion or 3.4×1038) addresses.

Internet Protocol version 6 (IPv6) is a version of the Internet Protocol (IP) that is designed to succeed Internet Protocol version 4 (IPv4). The Internet operates by transferring data in small packets that are independently routed across networks as specified by an international communications protocol known as the Internet Protocol. Each data packet contains two numeric addresses that are the packet's origin and destination devices.