You’ve probably heard about the looming shortage of Internet addresses, even if you’ve never gone looking for one. But depending on what websites you visit and how you get to them, you may be helping to solve it.

If you go to Google or Facebook through a major carrier in the U.S., Germany or France, for example, there’s a decent chance you’re using IPv6 [Internet Protocol, Version 6], the next-generation system that has so many addresses that the world may never use them up. Though it’s pretty much invisible to end users, the new protocol is already making service providers’ networks run better and may be speeding up your connections, too.

“I think a lot of people don’t realize how much IPv6 there is out there,” said Mat Ford, technical program manager of the Internet Society, the organizer of World IPv6 Launch.

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