When Will IPv6 Be Available to Joe Public?

For those that keep up with the current affairs within the Information Technology segment it is of no surprise that the world is running out of IPv4 IP addresses. Current estimates are that the world will be depleted of this resource sometime around May 2011. However, unlike a natural resource that cannot be obtained again, this just means that the ICAAN (Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers) will no longer have any more IP addresses to sell. The current IP addresses in use will still work and you will still be able to get to your favorite web sites, etc.

So what does this all really mean to the average person? And why is it so important to get to IPv6 globally? These are really good questions and for the most part the average user will not see much of a true difference. From a technology side, this limits a number of things. For starters when someone goes to build and post a new web site to the Internet, they need to have an IP assigned to this web site. When the Internet started out it all web sites had to have unique IP addresses. Well this is no longer the case as multiple web sites can share the same IP address so long as we use the www.domainname.com address to access the web site and not the actual IP address, but that is not always the case. Therefore, there will be an eventual limitation on new web sites that can be hosted and most importantly the servers that support that web site. A good example would be MySpace, if you ping the web address you resolve to a single IP address, however there are a number of servers behind the scenes where you are actually directed to, and all of these servers need unique IP addresses.

IPv6 will also be very important in the advancement of new technology as 4G networks are currently being built for the cellular world, these 4G networks will need IPv6 up and running in order to offer the services promised. According to wikipedia.org IPv6 is critical to the expansion of the new 4G network.

Another area is the ability of companies to provide an IP address to your home or business router. Looking at the typical home on high speed internet access, you have a router and this router obtains an IP address from your Internet Provider and this IP address has to reside in the public space. Then you connect all of your computers to the router, and all your computers obtain a Private Class IP address usually in the 192.x.x.x or 10.x.x.x range. The IP addresses only work because your router obtains an IP address such as 24.16.39.159. So all the Internet traffic coming from your home and back again is masked behind the 24.16.39.159 address, this is important as more and more homes and business are being connected to the Internet via high speed options require at least one IP address. If IPv6 does not become viable to the public there is a possibility that prices for internet service can go up due to the scarcity of available IP addresses.

In regards to IP addresses becoming scarce I think that the majority of companies that have purchased large amounts of bulk IP addresses will work on expanding IPv6 internally within their main organization freeing up IPv4 IP addresses for their customers until we can all get onto IPv6. When I began looking into the slow movement towards IPv6 I found several startling items.

• Companies are slow to move to IPv6 and to incur the cost of the hardware needed due to perception that the end consumers are not ready for this technology

• I found that current technology available is not IPv6 ready

• Many companies are not willing to move from their current comfort zones.

According to PC World and SearchTelecom consumers are just not ready for IPv6. I am not sure about the accuracy of these finding, and I say that because I feel that manufactures are to partly blame. The bigger the company the more money they have to spend on upgrading their equipment to IPv6 standards. When dealing with the average consumer we do not have the same type of budget to ensure that we are IPv6 compliant. This ties directly in to the second bullet above, that current technology is not ready for the end user.

The new network cards that are built into the main boards of all of our computers are IPv6 complaint. They are just waiting to obtain an IP address from some source. When I look at the IP address assigned to my computer via my router I find that I am receiving a local link IP address. This IP address has no way to connect to anything and is equivalent to the 169.x.x.x range seen with IPv4 when a computer is not obtaining a proper IP address.

In order for my computer to use an IPv6 IP address is either by a router that can process an IPv6 to IPv4 translation or I need to be connected to a service that provides IPv6. Therefore, even though my PC is ready my current router is not, I did some investigation and found that none of the current routers by companies like Linksys, Dlink, Netgear, or Belkin (who produce routers found at your local computer store) show IPv6 compatibility. Looking at the configuration interface all areas are geared toward IPv4. Cisco has routers that re ready, and I am sure that there are other high end routers that are IPv6 compatible. But at a price of $400 or more, these items are not priced for home or small to medium business use. If these companies really want the end consumer to be ready for IPv6, then this needs to be built into the router.

I also read that many companies that do offer internet service are not in a hurry to expand to IPv6, as they have spent a large number of dollars supporting IPv4, and since their customer cannot obtain equipment that supports IPv6, their attitude is why bother, we can wait till later when more devices require this new protocol. I can understand their lack of investment, but I still feel that if they did provide some IPv6 services, then as more and more businesses use the new IPv6 they will be able to expand fairly rapidly.

According to AT&T they are starting to push IPv6 to some of their larger corporate customers with hopes of a more wide scale usage of IPv6 to end consumers sometime in 4^th quarter of 2011. I think that we will see this usage more so in the 4G network, as it needs IPv6 to work. The new 4G standard relies on two main things that IPv6 provides; one, each device needs its own IP address and two, the devices will rely on the security that IPv6 provides.

Sources:
www.att.com
www.belkin.com
www.cisco.com
www.linksys.com
www.netgear.com
www.dlink.com
www.wikipedia.org
http://searchtelecom.techtarget.com/generic/0,295582,sid103_gci1518922,00.html
http://www.pcworld.com/businesscenter/article/208948/atandt_lagging_while_others_lead_on_ipv6.html
http://www.kuro5hin.org/story/2008/8/23/161150/550
http://www.zdnetasia.com/lack-of-vision-high-costs-hinder-ipv6-migration-62202312.htm
http://www.icann.org/