I stumbled on to an IPv4 depletion counter a few weeks ago, and that reminded me of the problem we are going to face in a couple of years. The crippling of the internet as we know it. Lack of IPv4 space will break a lot of stuff, starting from you watching HBO online, you getting your email delivered, your comics, and your Viagra spam mails. Even if not getting the Viagra spam mails is a good thing, we will still face a lot of hard time, ahead. That I can promise you!
Big players don’t have any interest in training their people to handle IPv6, or to handle dual stacking, they are not building their gadgets to support IPv6 yet, because it’s still far far away, but their costs will jump from a normal normal curve to a very steep one just because they did not plan ahead.
It’s only 96 more bits, it’s not magic, but someone has to know how to do it. If you have no clue about what I just said here, watch the interview below and ask your system administrator about it. If you are the system administrator, watch the interview below, start asking for funds and time to work on it but most important start dual stacking. Slowly, gently, get your experience with IPv6 otherwise you’re gonna pay the big bucks in the end.
Randy Bush on IPv6 Deployment
IPv6 provides enough addresses to allow the Internet to continue to expand and the industry to innovate. It is not, however, directly compatible with IPv4, meaning that a device connected via IPv4 cannot communicate directly with a device connected using IPv6.
Deploying IPv6 on a global scale is vital to the Internet industry, but it requires pro-active steps on the part of industry players: technology must be upgraded, staff trained, business plans developed. Uptake to date has been relatively slow, but this is now changing, and businesses need to be aware of the need to adopt IPv6. To ignore IPv6 is to risk your medium to long term business viability.
Ripe NCC built a website with a lot of starting points for deploying IPv6 at http://www.ipv6actnow.org I suggest you take a look at it, watch the interviews and start preparing.