IPv6 - The discussion continues

It's fascinating what does and doesn't generate discussion among us geeks. Still, we were pleasantly surprised by both the amount of discussion and continued wide range of opinions that our posing the question of the business case for IPv6 brought about. And since some of you may not have visited the discussion pages for the prior two newsletters and continued discussion at the Webtorials Water Cooler, this week's newsletters will summarize some of the comments.

IPv4 vs. IPv6

We'll start with the comments that were in favor of IPv6. One of the first people to comment stated flatly that "I will NEVER buy another router that doesn't support IPv6. One more [garden variety home router]? No thank you! These guys are already losing my business..." This was countered by a statement that many home routers already support IPv6.

Another excellent comment reinforced our contention that IPv6 is more critical for ISPs and vendors than for end users, especially in the immediate future. He stated, "IPv4 addresses will dry up around 2010-2012 - if you're an ISP and your block runs out you'll die even if your customers haven't already abandoned you. And businesses buying router hardware are already starting to require IPv6 support even if they never turn it on, so hardware makers who can't do IPv6 have already lost sales.

"But many end users who can't do IPv6 may take their time to really support it - enough layers of NAT, 6to4 and 4to6 converters and tunnels can let them limp along, and if you've already got an IPv4 address for your Web site, IPv6-only browser users will have a 6to4 NAT somewhere to let them reach you. Expect some ugliness to straggle along for years, but more and more of it will get hidden.

And even in these tough economic times, another person commented that it's time to move forward, stating, "It's not impossible to imagine that that the Internet could continue to exist for thousands of years. The number of addresses in IPv4 is less than the number of bytes of RAM in a typical desktop.

"The 'business case' for IPv6 is for the Internet to continue existing in a usable form. Sticking with IPv4 just means the future network will become ever-crappier, so we might as well just suck it up and fix it now."

Next time, we'll wrap up this discussion with a look at two disparate but interesting aspects – hex code and government mandates.

Steve Taylor is president of Distributed Networking Associates and publisher/editor-in-chief of Webtorials. Jim Metzler is vice president of Ashton, Metzler & Associates.