One day after completing a successful 24-hour trial of IPv6, Facebook, Google and Yahoo said at a joint press conference that they would begin permanently supporting this upgrade to the Internet's main communications protocol on some of their key websites.

Joined by two content delivery networks -- Akamai and Limelight, which also pledged their commitment to IPv6 deployment -- these popular websites proclaimed the World IPv6 Day trial to be a resounding success. All three companies said they had handled a significant increase in IPv6 traffic on June 8 without suffering serious technical glitches.

IPv6 features an expanded addressing scheme, so it can handle vastly more devices connected directly to the Internet than its predecessor called IPv4. However, IPv6 is not backward compatible with IPv4, which means website operators have to upgrade their network equipment and software to support IPv6 traffic.

More: http://www.computerworld.com/s/article/9217508/