Random Computer Bits

It's a fact that Internet Protocol version 4, IPv4, the current protocol that the internet runs on, is old and battered. But it works. And it works well. The biggest issue with it now seems to be the shortage of addresses, with the 32 bit addressing scheme only supporting about 4.23 billion unique addresses. While techniques such as NAT seem to alleviate the problem, this is of course, only a temporary solution. Estimates seem to show the IPv4 address pool running out within 2-3 years, which doesn't give us much time to upgrade the internet to IPv6 (the vast majority of the internet is still running on IPv4). It's quite possible that there will be a day when people are unable to get onto the internet because they can no longer acquire an IPv4 address.

This is the day I'm looking forward to. It makes me excited to think about it. Here's why: IPv6 rocks. It improves and adds so many things to the internet which would otherwise be unable to be added. Without requiring techniques such as NAT, devices are now exposed directly onto the internet. Any device added to the internet can now be communicated to by any other device connected to the internet. The possibilities are endless. On the nitty-gritty details of the implementation, device autoconfiguration is simpler, there's a special version of the protocol being deployed for mobile devices, and security is more integrated into the protocol itself.

Why am I not simply looking forward to the day that my ISP starts providing IPv6 connectivity to its clients? Simply put: because they won't. They won't, unless the pressure is great, and that pressure comes with IPv4 address exhaustion. Yes, while thousands of people are scrambling to upgrade their network equipment so that it is IPv6 capable, I'm cheering every time another IPv4 address gets used up.

The two biggest bottlenecks with IPv6 adoption appear to be router manufacturers and ISPs. An alarmingly few number of routers come equipped with IPv6-capable firmware, and you'll be hard-pressed to find an ISP offering IPv6 connectivity in North America (in Europe and Asia, the situation seems to be a bit better). The only way to make these bottlenecks disappear is for the situation to get more serious.

And as a result, I'm preparing my own network for IPv6, by tunneling IPv6 over the IPv4 internet provided by my ISP to offer my entire network IPv6 addresses. This way, when it's time to make the switch, it will only involve a few commands at my gateway shell.

Down with IPv4!