Yahoo! announced today that it will begin supporting Internet Protocol version 6 (IPv6) on several of its most popular websites starting June 6. Permanent IPv6 support will be added to Yahoo! News, My Yahoo!, Shine, OMG, and Yahoo’s content distribution network. In subsequent months the change will be rolled out to other Yahoo! sites including Yahoo! Sports, Yahoo! Mail, and Yahoo! Finance.
The announcement came on Yahoo!’s corporate blog, where Yahoo! IPv6 Evangelist Jason Fesler stated the company’s commitment to ensuring “the long-term health and growth of the internet.” From the blog post:
The Internet is more than just a web address or an email address. Each time you visit www.yahoo.com, your computer looks up the proper number that will connect your web browser to our web server. Your computer does this for every single site it accesses.
The original Internet design is now running out of these unique numbers. Just like phone numbers, it is difficult to share the same number with several people (or several web sites). The main feature of IPv6 is to extend the Internet’s numbering system. This will allow more people, more devices, and more applications and web sites to join the Internet.
Yahoo is participating in World IPv6 Launch Day on June 6 along with other companies including Google, Bing, Facebook, Time Warner Cable, and Comcast. The event is organized by the Internet Society, a global initiative devoted to the open development and use of the web. The switch to IPv6 is needed because addresses for IPv4 will run out in the near future. Though most internet users with modern browsers will not notice any difference come June 6, Yahoo! has provided an IPv6 help page that includes a browser test.