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When the internet was created in the 1970s, no-one would have imagined just how ubiquitous its use would be.
Today, nearly every man, woman and child 'connects' on a daily basis and even humble domestic devices such as refrigerators and cookers can be connected to the internet to aid daily life. In 2010, Gartner1 predicted that 1.6 billion smart phones alone will shipped, each having its own IP address - illustrating the scale of the issue.
IPv6 - the new, replacement, addressing system for the internet, the postcode for the web, the language on which our online world will be built in the future -is a looming 'apocalypse' heading towards network managers everywhere. The potential impact on businesses who are not IPv6-ready is immense. For example, online retailers could find consumers can access their websites, but can't make an actual purchase damaging their bottom line, brand image and ability to compete. Premonitions of IT managers and CIOs (and ultimately CEOs) running from buildings screaming "who will save us?!" fill the media. But hold the front page; we have been here before haven't we? Remember Y2K?
Is the 'IPv6 apocalypse' vendor-induced hype, or something network managers and CIOs need to take seriously? In honesty, it's both. Must organisations immediately rip and replace their entire IT infrastructure to prevent their businesses grinding to a halt? No.
Many Internet Service Providers (ISPs) and Internet Exchange Points (IXPs) are already taking action to ensure they can provide an IPv4 to IPv6 translation service for web users that will ease migration. This means most users will see little or no impact to their day to day online experience. Many enterprises, with senior managers and board directors having sleepless nights about 'Y2K II - IPv6 Attacks', will be pleased to discover that they already have IPv6-ready infrastructures in place without even knowing it. However, while there is no need for panic, IPv6 is something businesses (such as online retailers, banks, service providers, and content providers) need to start preparing for, and start preparing for right now.
IPv6 has been in use for years
IPv6 is not new. It was back in July 2004 that the internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) modified the DNS root servers to support the protocol, but with IPv4 addresses still available, no one really took much notice. However, IPv4 - the current addressing system used to date for directing traffic between devices to ensure delivery to the right server, computer or smartphone - can only generate a finite number of unique addresses (around 4.3 billion). With IDC2 just announcing that over 400 million smartphones were sold in the last three months of 2010 alone, and that it expects a 43-44 percent increase in the numbers of internet connected mobiles in 2011, it's easy to see why we are running out of IPv4 addresses at a rapid rate.
The challenge for businesses, especially those who have to serve large numbers of external requests for access to their systems and networks, is that IPv6 is not compatible with IPv4 technology. Which means a consumer with a broadband or dial-up modem that has been assigned an IPv6 address, won't be able to access services held on servers running on an IPv4 architecture as - to quote Stephen Shankland3 in his excellent article on this topic - "an IPv4-only server has no way to talk to a computer with an IPv6 address".
