The launch of Internet Protocol version 6 - commonly referred to as IPv6 - will bring about substantial `under the hood' changes to how the Internet works; with the new technology being turned on by websites and Internet service providers for transmission of data.

The Internet has thus far been running on a system - called Internet Protocol version 4, or IPv4 - which was developed by researchers nearly 35 years back, as part of U. S. Defense Department's experimental project dubbed ARPAnet.

The 4.3 billion addresses which the IPv4 created at the time of its origin appeared to be a massive number for the experimental project; but with the passage of time, and with an ever-increasing number of devices getting connected to the Internet in the present day, the addresses offered by IPv4 are fast being gobbled up.

As such, the launch of IPv6 will pave the way for the ensuring Internet connectivity to a wider range of devices, as the new system can assign a whopping number of approximately 340 trillion trillion trillion IP addresses --- that is, a number which exactly is as overwhelmingly mammoth as: 340,282,366,920,938,463,463,374,607,431,768,211,456!

While the IPv4 standard having led to the running out of IP addresses in some parts of the world around a year back, making it quite evident that upper limit of connectable devices would have been hit in the future, the IPv6 will ensure that IP addresses do not run out for a long time --- even when all kinds of unimaginable devices getting online!