News

The Ashmolean Museum has become the first museum in the world to trial the next generation of the Internet – Internet Protocal Version 6 (IPv6). Beginning at 12am on 8 June, the Ashmolean, in company with 400 other major organisations such as NASA, Google and Harvard University, took part in a 24-hour trial of IPv6 – running its main webserver over IPv6 to test the readiness of the new system before it is launched around the world.

Similar to the way phone numbers have, over the years, become longer and changed format in order to generate more numbers for a growing demand, the Internet is fast approaching the point where it will exhaust its finite number of addresses (IP addresses) assigned to Internet-connected devices. IPv6 has been in development since 1998 and will respond to this problem.

The Ashmolean’s in-house ICT department, in partnership with the University of Oxford’s Computing Service, has carried out research and development to enable the Museum to take part in World IPv6 Day on 8 June. Users will not notice any difference to the appearance of the Ashmolean’s website, but behind-the-scenes the web content will be hosted, for 24-hours, by the new version of the Internet.

Dr Jonathan Moffett, Head of ICT at the Ashmolean said, “The Museum is extremely proud to be taking part in World IPv6 Day. The initiative is making a great contribution towards the launch of the next generation of the Internet and it is a tremendous achievement for the country’s oldest museum to be at the forefront of this technological development.”