IP addresses gone by 2010. IPV6 can’t help if not fully implemented

Quite a few of us remember the fear mongering surrounding the Y2K date roll over problem that was over played to sensational proportions. IT management recalls being forced to spend billions to remediate what was a non-problem in many cases. These memories may be contributing factors to the general apathy for implementing IPV6 to provide additional address space that Could turn into a real crisis.

The headline issue is address space: with its 32-bit field, there can be something over four billion IP addresses on the same network. At the time it was designed, that seemed like enough for everything you could ever want to do on a network. Now, even with various ways to reuse common addresses on subnets, it’s grossly inadequate. There are, after all, something like three billion mobile phones alone in use in the world.

So in 1996, a new version IPv6, was created. This has enough addresses for the entire universe; the idea was that as it got adopted, first in the backbones and then out to the edges of the network, enough IP nodes would move across to ease the address crunch and, in time, allow IPv4 to quietly fade away, like black and white television in the face of colour.

Hasn’t happened. Now, the consensus is that IPv4 will continue to be important for ten to twenty years at least - possibly for the foreseeable future - while the address space will run out in two to four years. As far as can be ascertained, IPv6 won’t be in any position to solve that problem: if anything, it will add to it - we’ll have to run the two systems side by side, with all manner of unforeseen management and security problems arising from their interaction.

In short, we’re heading towards a classic resource depletion, with the haves at loggerheads with the have-nots. When IPv4 addresses do run out, the implications are huge: much commercial development will stop and many of the aspects of the Internet we’ve taken for granted will change. This will happen by 2010 - at best, by 2012 - and to form a consensus on what to do when that happens will take an enormous effort that would normally take tons of time. Which, in this case, we just don’t have. source: ZDnet

This is not exactly a complex issue to understand, but most of the media is ignoring it. I’ve not even heard any stories of impending melt down form the tin foil hat crowd. Will not Al Gore, the “father of the internet” step foRward to Save us from Ourselves? Where is Art Bell when you need him?