As you might have read, the Internet Society Newsletter today announced World IPv6 Day. The intent is to create AAAA Records for the homepages of major websites which previously only had IPv6 connectivity on subdomains on 08 June 2011 and test them for 24 hours. Though the event is designed for websites owned by large companies with millions of viewers, IPv6 is just as important for people running low traffic personal websites.

With this in mind, I am announcing my intent to participate in World IPv6 day, however, I would like to take it a step further. By most estimates, having a dual stack running IPv4 and IPv6 will only cause connectivity problems for some 0.05% of users [1]. Before and after June 8th, I will begin carefully monitoring access to my website and looking for changes and trends in the data. If at the end of the day I find that having IPv6 connectivity on the main site does not adversely affect the majority of my users, I will be permanently enabling IPv6 support on SamWhited.com.

I have sent my intent to participate to the Internet Society, and hope they will see that their mission affects large companies and small websites alike. The traffic generated from being an official part of IPv6 day (both before, and after the event) would give me a much better baseline and signal to noise ratio to work with as I monitor my traffic this June.

With only ~37 days worth of IPv4 addresses remaining as of 12 January 2011, it is imperative that ISP’s and device manufacturers begin to take a look at restructuring their services to include IPv6 [2]. NAT is only a temporary solution, and can not be allowed to grow at the ISP level. We all share a mission to ensure a widely available and open internet, where users are free to consume and generate content without being locked into the rigid rules of the old and dying protocols used by their ISP’s. Some people say the way forward is not clear, and many argue–correctly–that it may be costly. However, in the end, IPv6 is the only way to save the internet from suffocation, and move forward into an evermore open playing field.

EDIT: On January 14th I received the following reply from ISOC’s Phil Roberts:

Hi Sam,

thanks for your interest. I’ve had quite a few responses from individuals who have their own website. I’m not sure we’re going to list individuals but we may, and if so, you’re [sic] site is in my database.

Regards, Phil

Hopefully they will realize that IPv6 affects large and small alike, and list smaller websites as well so that we can all improve our quality of service. If you would like to see smaller sites represented, contact ISOC and let them know!