Microsoft said on Thursday that it plans to enable an IPv6 version of Bing on World IPv6 day.

Bing is joining other major websites in “World IPv6 Day” on June 8, 2011 as part of the Internet Society’s effort to validate the readiness of IPv6 as the new foundation of the Internet. Earlier today, IANA, the international body responsible for distributing Internet addresses, completed its final allocation of IPv4 addresses. IPv4 has been steadily approaching its exhaustion phase and the final five blocks of IP addresses were allocated on Thursday. The IANA held a press conference and live webcast on Thursday to mark the occasion and look to the future of IPv6.

Microsoft and other technology companies have been working behind the scenes to prepare for the next-generation Internet Protocol. “Although a complete migration will take years, we are hopeful that the vast majority of people will never notice the transition,” admitted Bing Program Manager Kevin Boske. Microsoft plans to enable world-wide IPv6 connectivity to Bing.com, for the purposes of a one-day test on June 8, 2011. “IPv4 traffic will continue to connect to Bing without any change. In fact, most Bing users won’t even notice that this transition is occurring,” said Boske.

Microsoft’s Windows operating systems have had IPv6 support for years and it’s now the turn of Internet Service Providers to future proof the Internet. Internet Protocol 6 supports 340282366920938463463374607431768211455 addresses (340 undecillion, 282 decillion, 366 nonillion, 920 octillion, 938 septillion, 463 sextillion, 463 quintillion, 374 quadrillion, 607 trillion, 431 billion, 768 million, 211 thousand and 455) addresses. “This is another step in the multi-year process to shepherd in a new Internet era, with billions upon billions of addresses representing billions of devices and users,” said Boske.