The End of IPv4

[Michael Haney]

February 3rd, 2011 is a Day in Internet History.  It is the day where
all 4 billion IPv4 addresses are no longer unallocated.

The Internet has run out of IPv4 addresses.  Don't munch all you want,
we can't make any more.

There has been a lot of resistance towards switching to IPv6 but it
looks like its pretty much unavoidable now.  There are some tricks
that ISPs can use in the meantime, but they are only temporary stop
gap measures not permanent fixes.  The average consumer won't see any
difference when their ISP switches to IPv6, but the enterprise is
going to be impacted pretty hard.  This is because a lot of businesses
use older devices which don't support IPv6, and can't be upgraded to
use IPv6 because their too old or there are no software upgrades
available for the device to support IPv6.  Replacing them with devices
that do support IPv6 is estimated to cost billions of dollars for
enterprise.  In other words, this is going to get really expensive for
businesses, but its their own fault for holding off for so long.

As you all know IPv4 is a 32-bit decimal based addressing system that
uses 4 sets of 3 number digits in its addresses, whereas IPv6 is a
128-bit hexadecimal based addressing system that uses 8 sets of 4
digit number sets in its addresses.  The number of address
combinations is estimated to be 5 x 10 ^ 28 for all of the 6.8 billion
people on the planet.  In other words, there are more IPv6 address
combinations than there are grains of sand on the Earth.  We're not
going to run out of those any time soon.

Ubuntu will be just fine.  It already supports IPv6.  Windows XP
however will have trouble.  It does come with IPv6 but it needs to be
installed.  There's a command line method to install IPv6 that I found
online on the Microsoft support site.  Here's the URL for anyone who
needs it ...

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/2478747

Most if not all modern smartphones and tablet devices all support
IPv6.  Windows Vista, Windows 7, and Mac OS X also support IPv6.

-- 
Michael "TheZorch" Haney
"The greatest tragedy in mankind's entire history may be the hijacking
of morality by religion." ~ Arthur C. Clarke
"The suppression of uncomfortable ideas may be common in religion and
politics, but it is not the path to knowledge, and there is no place
for it in the endeavor of science. " ~ Carl Sagan

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