The discussions about IPv4 exhaustion date have existed for a very long time they are heating up again. But this time around this seems to be different.
As of September 2007, Geoff Huston of APNIC predicts with detailed simulations an exhaustion of the unallocated IANA pool in May 2010. After the IANA pool exhaustion, each individual regional Internet registry (RIR) will be able to meet demand for about 10 months with their last assigned addresses.
On May 21, 2007, the American Registry for Internet Numbers (ARIN), the North American RIR, advised the internet community that due to the expected exhaustion in 2010 “migration to IPv6 numbering resources is necessary for any applications which require ongoing availability from ARIN of contiguous IP numbering resources”.On June 20, 2007, the Latin American and Caribbean Internet Addresses Registry (LACNIC), the South American RIR, advised “preparing its regional networks for IPv6″ by January 1, 2011 for the exhaustion of IPv4 addresses “in three years time”.
On June 26, 2007, the Asia-Pacific Network Information Centre (APNIC), the RIR for the Pacific and Asia, endorsed a statement by the Japan Network Information Center (JPNIC) that to continue the expansion and development of the Internet a move towards an IPv6-based Internet is advised. This with an eye on the expected exhaustion around 2010 which will create a great restriction on the Internet.
So what does this all mean? I do not see much movement toward moving the Internet applications towards IPv6 ready state. In USA even if we wanted to, we cannot get an IPv6 IP address from my ISP. May be I can use 6Net but that is hardly production ready. Are we going to have a Y2K style crisis come 2011? Or the date is not right and it is more likely that we we will find another way to apply bandaid on the the IP address issues.
I have looked at several IPv4 to IPv6 transition mechanisms. None of them make sense. None of them seem to be applicable to any large ISP. It seems that we have not solved technical issue let aside the business case for the transition.
What do people think?
Also, are you using IPv6? If yes how?