Top 3 reasons PR pros need to know about IPv6 [Archived]
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By Jennifer Bly, Public Relations and Social Media Coordinator, ARIN
Not a lot people outside of the technical community are aware that the Internet is undergoing one of its most important evolutions to date. To put it simply, the Internet as we know it will soon be a thing of the past. The pool of available IPv4 addresses has just about run dry, and once they are gone, the old Internet will be replaced by a new network based on a new protocol: IPv6. This change will have a massive impact on public relations professionals who increasingly rely on data to track campaign performance, conversions and website traffic.
This week PR News featured a byline by ARIN’s President and CEO, John Curran, on PR’s Stake in the Evolution of the Internet, where he explained why it is critical that public relations professionals pay attention to the evolution of the Internet and why the shift to IPv6 will have a major impact on their day-to-day work.
Here are the top 3 reasons we think PR pros ought to know about IPv6:
1. Reach all your audiences
As IPv4 addresses become increasingly scarce, more and more new users are connecting to the Internet via IPv6 across the world. If your website isn’t IPv6-enabled, it may be unreachable to new Internet users in the near future.
2. Measure effectively
If you use tools to determine website visitors’ behavior and preferences, including what’s driving traffic, geographic location of potential customers, and conversion rates, IPv6 is essential to you. When Internet users browse the web via an IPv6-only connection but want to load a website that is not IPv6-enabled, they must use a network gateway that can make it appear like they are coming for a different location than they actually are. This can throw off website analytics that are used to determine target audiences and campaign successes or failures.
3. Stay ahead of the competition
If people are having trouble accessing your website, they could turn to competitors who have already made their content available over IPv6. Many major online companies such (Google, Facebook, Bing, YouTube, Yahoo, to name a few) have already have made their websites IPv6-enabled, and you should too.
OUT OF DATE?
Here in the Vault, information is published in its final form and then not changed or updated. As a result, some content, specifically links to other pages and other references, may be out-of-date or no longer available.