Comments on: We’re About to Run Out of IP Addresses. Is It Time to Panic?

By: Tory Eyler

Tory Eyler — Mon, 01 Aug 2011 12:51:16 +0000

Youcompletedsome valid

By: John@ Vancouver WA Real Estate

John@ Vancouver WA Real Estate — Wed, 26 Jan 2011 15:10:33 +0000

I once worked for the Old Telephone industry, where prior to the breakup of AT&T the industry thought they had enough Area Codes to last many generations. The high cost to enable “number portability” for phone numbers was necessary, and very beneficial. Let’s go ahead and implement IPv6; and maybe convert to the metric system in the USA at the same time!

By: Kevin C.

Kevin C. — Wed, 26 Jan 2011 05:36:03 +0000

The internet was a *LOT* smaller when it switched to IPv4, way back in 1981. Back then they could just declare a day to switch, and everyone switched that day, with the old version no longer supported.

By: nick

nick — Wed, 26 Jan 2011 05:31:23 +0000

The internet moved to IPv4 back when there were hundreds of computers on the internet and attaching 4.3 billion seemed ridiculous so as to be laughable to even create a 32-bit system in the first place. I bet people were bitching about the extra memory a 16-bit system would free up and burden on communications those extra 16 bits would force upon the world.

What we should really be thinking about, however, is how to future proof v6 so that when we need to transition to v8 it will be built into the spec…

By: BrianDH

BrianDH — Wed, 26 Jan 2011 05:28:35 +0000

@Relativity

Put simply: IPv4 was standardized in 1981 — there was not nearly as much infrastructure to migrate back then, nor was it nearly as economically significant.

Also, the nomenclature is a bit odd; though there were roughly analogous protocols, IPv1-3 never actually existed under those names.

By: Relativity

Relativity — Wed, 26 Jan 2011 00:55:47 +0000

Oops, OK typo-Nazis, that should read: “So, why can’t we do it now to IPv6?”

By: Relativity

Relativity — Wed, 26 Jan 2011 00:53:52 +0000

Didn’t this happen before? So, what happened when the Internet moved from IPv1 to IPv2 to IPv3 to IPv4? So, why can’t we do it not to IPv6?

By: Brian Too

Brian Too — Wed, 26 Jan 2011 00:21:47 +0000

The IPv6 project has been easy to put off. As the article says, established organizations have long since acquired a block of IP addresses and they often have plenty for internal use.

A secondary reason has been the long life of Windows XP. XP does not have IPv6 support and it will not be upgraded to do so. That support exists in Vista and Win7. Now that those newer operating systems (Win7 particularly) are getting strong uptake, a barrier to IPv6 is slowly but surely being chipped away.

A few organizations are going to get caught in the pinch. Most will upgrade as part of standard evergreening/modernization initiatives, I believe. This will not be the next Y2K event.