Today, June 8th 2011, is the World IPv6 day. Major organisations such as Google, Facebook, Yahoo! wil offer native IPv6 connectivity.

To check your IPv6 connectivity, you can run a test from your browser: Test your IPv6 connectivity.

If you install the ShowIP Firefox plugin, you will know the IP address of web sites while you browse and therefore quickly know whether you navigate using IPv4 or IPv6.

Below are some basic performance results between IPv4 and IPv6. Since most routers are tuned for IPv4, the IPv6 flow path is not yet as fast as IPv4. The (small) performance degradation has nothing to do with the IPv6 protocol.

Google IPv4 vs IPv6 ping

$ ping -n www.google.com
PING www.l.google.com (209.85.146.103) 56(84) bytes of data.
64 bytes from 209.85.146.103: icmp_seq=1 ttl=55 time=9.63 ms

$ ping6 -n www.google.com
PING www.google.com(2a00:1450:400c:c00::67) 56 data bytes
64 bytes from 2a00:1450:400c:c00::67: icmp_seq=1 ttl=56 time=11.6 ms

Yahoo IPv4 vs IPv6 ping

$ ping -n www.yahoo.com
PING fpfd.wa1.b.yahoo.com (87.248.122.122) 56(84) bytes of data.
64 bytes from 87.248.122.122: icmp_seq=1 ttl=58 time=25.7 ms

$ ping6 -n www.yahoo.com
PING www.yahoo.com(2a00:1288:f00e:1fe::3000) 56 data bytes
64 bytes from 2a00:1288:f00e:1fe::3000: icmp_seq=1 ttl=60 time=31.3 ms

Facebook IPv4 vs IPv6 ping

$ ping -n www.facebook.com
PING www.facebook.com (66.220.156.25) 56(84) bytes of data.
64 bytes from 66.220.156.25: icmp_seq=1 ttl=247 time=80.6 ms

$ ping6 -n www.facebook.com
PING www.facebook.com(2620:0:1c18:0:face:b00c:0:1) 56 data bytes
64 bytes from 2620:0:1c18:0:face:b00c:0:1: icmp_seq=1 ttl=38 time=98.6 ms