As of May 18, 2012, developers working on Facebook applications will have access over IPv6 to Facebook’s development platform to test their applications out in preparation for World IPv6 Launch. In a blog post this week, Facebook’s Eric Osgood writes:
With the World IPv6 Launch coming on June 6th 2012, Facebook has committed to enabling IPv6 access for our users on most of our HTTP and HTTPS endpoints. Based on the results of last years IPv6 test on June 8th 2011, we are confident that enabling IPv6 on our platform will be a success. On May 18th, we will be enabling IPv6 on beta.facebook.com ahead of World IPv6 Launch to give our developer community time to discover issues and report bugs back to us.
IPv6 is vital because the Internet’s original addressing system (IPv4) has run out of free space. Since every device on the Internet relies on a unique address to communicate, we must transition to IPv6 which provides over 4 billion times more addresses than IPv4. IPv6 will ensure everyone (users, ISPs, governments, and companies) have direct and open access to the Internet.
We are thrilled to see this news out of Facebook and look forward to learning of developers ensuring their applications work over IPv6!