As the WordCamp Europe 2018 countdown continues, we are happy to announce the latest Shifter feature release!
IPv6 + Serverless-Static WordPress
IPv6 is now generally available for all newly created static WordPress sites. To enable this feature first start by recreating your static site and deploy.
For users with custom domains, you’ll also need to update your Access URL domain to the Raw domain name version.
All Shifter sites are automatically assigned a domain name similar to example.on.getshifter.io. The Raw domain name version of this can be found within your site’s Dashboard under settings.
We are happy to include IPv6 support at no cost to our customers and it’s the latest addition to our features. It’s available now for any plan which supports custom domains.
Why upgrade to IPv6?
IPv6 offers security and performance advantages over the widely used IPv4 protocol and these improvements are largely based on IPv6’s ability to be more unique in a world with billions of devices.
For example, the number of available IPv4 addresses is 2 to the power of 32 or 4,294,967,296. That’s a lot of but not even close to how many internet connected devices there are. This means each device using IPv4 depends on layers of routers and switches to assist with sending data.
The best way I’ve heard it described is how IPv4 compares to apartment addresses. Two apartments can have the same address, but they are located in different buildings. To send a package to either correctly you’ll need to specify the street address first.
It’s the same for two street addresses appearing in two different cities or two cities sharing the same name is different countries. The layers of networking above it, help with creating a unique address.
Using the same example with IPv6 those routes get more direct. Instead of sharing IP addresses and depending on many network layers to assist they are one of a kind (for now).
So, how many more addresses does IPv6 account for exactly? The available number of IPv6 addresses is 2 to the power of 128 or 340,282,366,920,938,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000.
Is IPv6 faster?
Yes! For most sites, the effect may be small but when milliseconds matter it’s worth the upgrade. It’s worth noticing there’s a lot of debate around this. The point where everyone seems to agree though is: If you can upgrade why not?
How is IPv6 more secure?
Fundamentally, yes. It gives networking administrators the opportunity to implement and security protocols by switching. It may not solve every networking vulnerability but it keeps us moving forward.