BT (NYSE: BT) has begun trialing IPv6 addressing with a group of its employees, setting a foundation to conduct a larger scale customer trial. But a number of customers are seeing an IPv6 address alongside the current IPv4 address that's being assigned to their connections.
According to an ISP Review report, the telco said that the address change emerged when it made some tweaks to its network in order to test IPv6 equipment.
"For some tests, we have to fully enable very small parts of the network for IPv6 for a limited period of time," BT said in a statement. "During this window of time, a very small number of customers who are not BT employees may get an IPv6 as well IPv4 address."
BT added, "They are not included in the trial and they should not notice any issues at all with their internet experience."
It appears that BT's main competitor Sky is already moving ahead with IPv6 by updating some of its customers' routers to support the new addressing scheme. Sky is conducting the trial before it deploys the protocol throughout its UK network.
Despite warnings from groups like the American Registry of Internet Numbers (ARIN) that the nearly 4.3 billion available IPv4 addresses are running out, service provider movement towards IPv6 has been slow due to the requirement to update homes with IPv6-capable equipment.
Statistics collected by Google (NASDAQ: GOOG) revealed that only a little over 6 percent of all Internet traffic uses the IPv6 protocol.
For more:
- BBC has this article
- ISPReview has this article
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