Sky – who provide broadband and digital TV services to UK residents and businesses – have recently enabled IPv6 to their consumer broadband customers. I believe they are the first UK ISP to do so, and I hope others follow very soon.
IPv6 is a replacement addressing scheme for all computers connected to the Internet. The current scheme – IPv4, which uses dotted numerals like 127.0.0.1, is fast running out of available addresses.
IPv6 uses longer addresses that contain both letters and numbers and up until now, take up has been slow as consumer ISPs have had no incentive to upgrade their networks and customers equipment to support this new scheme.
This is a huge step forward for the stability of the Internet, as it shows that a major UK ISP can successfully support the new IPv6 addressing scheme – hopefully allowing others, such as BT, to follow suit.
Here is the screenshot from WhatIsMyIP.com that greeted me this morning when I wanted to check what my current IP was, and I was amazed to find an IPv6 address!
