Brave New Web?

Note: This guest post was written by NC State News Services stalwart, and all-around swell guy, David Hunt.

The Internet may seem like a limitless universe of websites, blogs and Facebook pages but it’s actually filling up. Eventually, if people keep adding websites and connecting computers, notebooks, tablets and mobile devices to the Internet, all 4.3 billion possible network addresses will be taken.

But don’t despair. Information technology experts are working on a fix that will essentially replace the current Internet with a shiny new version offering 340 undecillion addresses. Think of that as 340 trillion groups of one trillion networks each, with each network handling a trillion devices.

To help the process along, some of the Web’s top sites (including NC State’s) are voluntarily switching to the new Internet Protocol for 24 hours today (Wednesday). This test, called World IPv6 Day (for Internet Protocol version 6), will identify any bugs that could cause problems when the new protocol is widely adopted.

How will the test affect your Web browsing? It almost certainly won’t. If you’re not using Internet Protocol version 6, you’ll just see the plain, old Internet, like you always do.

In addition to NC State, other participants include Google, Yahoo, Facebook, YouTube, Comcast and Sprint.

Worth noting: NC State’s participation in the test is only for the main home page and news page on www.ncsu.edu, not web.ncsu.edu.