Google is fully behind the development of IPv6--the next-generation Internet. It's easy, inexpensive and requires only a small team of developers to make it happen. But that's a very different conclusion from many in the business community, who think that moving to a bigger Internet is too expensive, time-consuming and hardly worth it despite the prediction that the Internet will run out of addresses by 2012.

Google's experience is extremely positive. "We can provide all Google services over IPv6," said Google network engineer Lorenzo Colitti at a meeting of the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF).

Colitti said it took a small team only 18 months to come up with a solution using engineers who spent 20 percent of their time on IPv6 and the rest on their assigned work. It's already paying off for Google. "It's refreshingly simple" to look at a network with globally addressable devices, Colitti said.

For more on Google and IPv6:
- check out this NetworkWorld.com article

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