World IPv6 Day, June 8

Today 8 June, 2011, Google, Facebook, Yahoo!, Akamai and Limelight Networks will be amongst some of the major organisations that will offer their content over IPv6 for a 24-hour “test flight”. The goal of the Test Flight Day is to motivate organizations across the industry – Internet service providers, hardware makers, operating system vendors and web companies – to prepare their services for IPv6 to ensure a successful transition as IPv4 addresses run out.

As the Internet developed there was debate over the network communications protocol to use, but ultimately the fourth revision of IP (IPv4) was implemented for communication between computers and networks. When the Internet was small the 32-bit addressing of IPv4 that limits it to just over 4 billion addresses was perfectly adequate, but recently the last sets of IPv4 addresses have been issued, meaning the size of the IPv4 Internet has reached its maximum.
To overcome this limitation, the Internet Engineering Task Force has been developing a 128-bit addressing system called IPv6 that allows for trillions upon trillions of additional unique addresses (340 undecillion, to be exact). Unfortunately, the addressing between these protocols is vastly different and not directly compatible, and networking companies have been reluctant to implement IPv6 while there was still room for IPv4. Nevertheless, the symbolic limit of IPv4 has come and the pressure is high for companies to start implementing IPv6 if they have not already done so.

What this means is that if you are using various Internet services tomorrow and are experiencing loss of connectivity or slowdowns, then be aware that this is likely because of problems with the IPv6 protocol. Some of the problems you may encounter during these tests include:

1. Internet servers not responding
2. intermittent connectivity after delays
3. unresponsive browsers if you use a built-in search field
4. slow loading and pauses in downloads, as well as incomplete downloads; and
5. slow or incomplete actions for Internet-related activities that aren't Web browsing, such as syncing and e-mail.

To help prevent these problems from happening, you can make sure your system is configured to use IPv6 if your ISP supports it.

~via Internet Society

NO Chrome for Android

The Browser Will Not Be Available For Phones, Tablets As Of Now

Google Inc will keep the focus of its chrome operating system on notebooks, and has no immediate plan to make it available on tablets or to merge with its popular Android software for smartphones, said a senior executive. Chrome users doubled over the past year to about 160 million.

Sunder Pichai, Google's senior vice president for Chrome, told a news conference on Tuesday during the computer PC show in Taipei. "We are entirely focused on the notebook form factor for now. We have no other plans at this time" Pichai said in response to a question on whether Chrome would also be available for tablet PC's.

NEW CHROME LAPTOP

Web-centric PC laptops, made by Sansung Electronics Co Ltd and Acer Inc using Chrome will go on sale in June, challenging Microsoft and Apple Inc.

The bare-bones operating system is essentially a web browser that steers users to applications such as email and spreadsheets directly on web, instead of using software stored on the PC's. Some analysts said it would be some time before Chrome could revolutionise the PC world in the same way that Google's Android operating system did for mobile devices.

The big issue is whether Google has the marketing and focus to position the Chrome PC to compete head on with the established full-OS laptop and tablet players in the summer computing market.

Steve Hodgkinson, IT research director for Asia Pacific.

Growing Market
The fast-growing market for smartphones and tablets using Google's Android operating system has led some observers to say that Google should merge it with Chrome. But Pichai dismissed such speculation. "We think it's distinctive of all other operating systems out there, so there are no current plan to converge this with anything else," he said.