Yes, the title is a joke. IPv6 is already here. It has been since before 1998. When the concept of exhaustion of IPv4 addresses was recognized, IPv6 was created with a much larger address space and intermediate approaches like “Classless Inter-Domain Routing” – which makes more efficient use of the addresses available - and Network Address Translation (see NAT below) were developed and implemented to reduce the speed of depletion. These delaying tactics have put off the inevitable, but are no longer enough.
What is fast approaching right now is an urgent requirement to take stock of how the depletion of IPv4 addresses in the next year to 18 months will impact you. What does this mean for individuals? The situation is really less a matter of end user preparedness, and more a matter of how well prepared your ISP (internet service provider) is for the address space exhaustion.
How does their preparedness impact you? Right now, most consumers receive a single IPv4 address to communicate with the rest of the internet. Typically that address is assigned to a small device called a ‘router’ which – on its own – assigns local addresses which are not globally visible. This approach utilizes NAT to figure out which local computer was trying to do out in the wider net. This works well for basic email and web browsing, but gets more complicated for gaming, video conferencing and other specialized applications.
In the earlier days of the internet, solutions like these were workable. There were fewer overall devices and most people used dial-up connections which shared a pool of addresses. Always-on connections like cable modems and DSL no longer share a pool. In the face of smart phones, sensor networks, and an ever-growing, world-wide penetration of internet access to developing areas, the clever solutions that maintained IPv4 for so long are no longer adequate to extend the effective IPv4 address space.
This is where IPv6 becomes a mainstream requirement.
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