World IPv6 Jump!

Initially published on 2013-04-01

Rationale

Often cited as one of the reasons of slow IPv6 uptake, is the lack of Internet resources and services that require IPv6 for operation or access. In other words, «why bother implementing IPv6, if every website is accessible on IPv4 anyways?»

Proposed Event

Participating websites and services will go IPv6-only* for 24 hours starting 00:00 UTC on 8th June 2013.

* (remove A-records from the primary visitor-facing domains and subdomains, leaving AAAA-records in place; optionally turn off listening on IPv4 sockets in software)

Expected Effect

Raised awareness about the need to transition to IPv6; introducing expectation that there can be useful IPv6-only resources on the general Internet; wide testing and possible proposals of improvement to the web browser behaviour in case when a target domain has only AAAA-record, but there is no local IPv6 connectivity.

Possible loss of up to 95% of daily website visitor counts for 24 hours at participating websites; actual impact is difficult to estimate, as many visitors can be actually IPv6 capable, but won't connect over IPv6 in case a website also has IPv4 (e.g. Teredo, 6to4 tunneling).

With the appropriate preparations (instructions on obtaining v6 connectivity) can be somewhat mitigated.

Lasting effect (sustained visitor count loss after the event finishes) is expected to be minimal or none.

Likely Participants

It is not expected that any of the major mainstream websites will participate; also unlikely that any website which displays advertisements or sells any sort of a product will want to risk one day's earnings participating in this event.

We could expect interest from IPv6 enthusiasts and various IT-, IPv6- and networking-related hobbyist websites and blogs.

Global IPv6 Milestones

8 June 2011: World IPv6 Day: Major participating websites enable IPv6 in addition to IPv4 for 24 hours;
6 June 2012: World IPv6 Launch: Major participating websites enable IPv6 permanently;
8 June 2013: World IPv6 Jump: Participants turn off IPv4, go IPv6-only for 24 hours;
8 June 2014(?): Participants turn off IPv4 permanently (may be postponed to a later date :)