Wednesday, June 6, 2012 is World IPv6 Day. At CloudFlare we're issuing a challenge to every site on the Internet: it's time to support IPv6 and enable the future. CloudFlare has made supporting IPv6 free and easy. Once you're signed up for CloudFlare, it only takes a single click to use our Automatic IPv6 Gateway and join the modern web. In other words: the web is out of excuses, it's time to join the future.
The Challenge
We'll be migrating all CloudFlare users who haven't enabled IPv6 yet to the SAFE IPv6 mode over the next twelve days. If you're a CloudFlare user, watch for an email with details. SAFE mode mimics the same IPv6 strategy used by big sites like Google and Facebook, allowing IPv6 traffic to come to a special subdomain on your site (e.g., ipv6.example.com). We've successfully tested this since we launched our IPv6 Gateway 9 months ago and it works great. Going forward, it will be the default option for all CloudFlare users.
Beyond the default mode, we're encouraging all our users to try FULL IPv6 mode before the June 6, 2012 deadline. FULL IPv6 mode enables a "dual stack," meaning that IPv4 and IPv6 traffic can access your site without having to go to a special domain. This blog, as well as CloudFlare's website, are currently running on FULL IPv6. While last year's World IPv6 Day demonstrated there were still some networks that had misconfigured IPv6 networks, our experience is that those problems have been largely addressed. You can enable FULL IPv6 Mode for all your websites by visiting our Global IPv6 Challenge page:
www.cloudflare.com/ipv6-challenge
Testing IPv6 Networks
In addition to enabling IPv6, we want to gather data on ISPs that are not properly supporting the protocol. Next week we'll be launching the IPv6 Network Testing app. Any website on CloudFlare's network can install the app with a single click. The app runs silently on a sampleset of your pages without interfering with other aspects of the page or slowing down your page loads.
The IPv6 Network Testing app tests 1) whether your visitors have IPv6 support; and 2) whether they can support "dual stack" websites that run FULL IPv6 mode. For sites that enable the app, we will not only give you visibility for your own visitors, but we will also publish aggregate data on the overall state of the web and reach out to ISPs we discover with broken networks.
CloudFlare, IPv6 & the Future
CloudFlare's mission is to help build a better web. As the Internet runs low on IPv4 address space, the web will suffer. IPv6 presents a classic chicken and egg problem. We're doing our part in helping address that problem by making it easy for anyone with a website to be available on IPv6 for free. We hope you'll help us spread the word about our Global IPv6 Challenge to your fellow webmasters, network operations teams and favorite websites.
We're proud of the fact that CloudFlare is already one of the top 5 providers of IPv6 connectivity for the largest sites on the Internet. But, as this infographic from Hackertarget.com illustrates, we still have a long way to go. Our challenge is simply: it's time for the web to stop making excuses; join us in enabling IPv6 support today. Learn more:
www.cloudflare.com/ipv6-challenge