IPv6 - the Tipping Point Year

This is a news item I just cant afford to miss.

2008 is being proclaimed as the Internet Protocol version 6 (IPv6) tipping point year. The author proclaims,

"IPv6 is finally breaking out of its cocoon of R&E networks; Government funded experiments, IPv6 Fora and Summits, some early adopters in the ISP community and is now on its way to become main stream. What changed in 2007 is the awakening and acceptance that we are really running out of IPv4 addresses and that further procrastination might be risky and detrimental after all. Like often in a timeline of events, change accumulated to create a discontinuity, resulting from the confluence of changing values for economical, technical and political variables. Needless to say, the moment of inertia to overcome with the present size and economical weight of a maturing internet was and remains considerable. "

I get a feeling of deja vu. I wrote an article in 2002 which was published by a magazine Voice and Data - the article was - IPv6 - Eight Driving Trends. I wrote,

"The existing Internet infrastructure is getting saturated with extreme demands on its capabilities. NGII will need major overhaul of the existing Internet Protocol called IPv4. IPv6 will enhance the IP address space from the present 32 bits to a mind-boggling 128 bits.

Although the economic factors of overhauling the existing Ipv4-based Internet Infrastructure will delay the wide spread deployment of IPv6, eventually IPv6 will prevail.
IPv6 simplifies many operations done by the existing IP in patched up or afterthought implementations. Also, some of the capabilities of IPv6 are simply not there in IPv4.

Japan, East Asia and Europe are three geographic areas that have already started investing heavily in IPv6. Japan has stressed the need for a IPv6 Internet infrastructure by 2005 AD. India and China are also catching up. However, in the US, the v4 to v6 conversion has yet to pick up. Hence, the spread of IPv6 has started from Asia, moving towards Europe, and will eventually take over the US."

A version of the artcile was translated and published in Chinese version as well @ http://www.ipv6.org.tw/NDHU/article/20020722.htm (Taiwan's IPv6 Forum site).


It is indeed the new era of 128 bit IP addresses, when all of us can own our own 100 IP addresses without having any Network Address Translations (NATs) in between. How will it help? It will give us an unbelievable access to each one of us - peer to peer will become a true reality and the world will be so location independent that Globalization that we have seen today will look like a cluster of different villages separted by Sahara deserts.

It is the new future that we will witness Now!