IPv6 - Coming to a root server near you

Just before year's end, ICANN/IANA sent out a short message saying that "on 4 February 2008, IANA will add AAAA records for the IPv6 addresses of the four root servers whose operators have requested it."

The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) is mostly responsible for the global Domain Name System, the Internet Assigned Numbers Authority (IANA) is the part of ICANN. That means that as of February 4, 2008, it will (theoretically) be possible for two IPv6 hosts to communicate across the IPv6 Internet without having to rely on any IPv4 infrastructure. It's been a long journey to get to this point.

Although there were some false starts (see this book chapter about IPv6 and the DNS), putting IPv6 information in the DNS has been routine for many years. For instance. Dutch ISP BIT at www.bit.nl is reachable over IPv6, and the root servers know the IPv6 addresses of the .nl servers, which in turn know the IPv6 addresses of the BIT DNS servers. So the only thing that prevents IPv6-users from reaching BIT, should anyone be careless enough to unplug the IPv4 Internet, is the fact that the root DNS servers are only listed by their IPv4 address.