Why should I care about IPv6?

IPv6 is the future of the Internet, and without it we can no longer grow.

We have been growing the commercial Internet for decades using the IPv4 address space. At the time of its creation, IPv4 was not intended to satisfy the needs of a global commercial Internet. It was intended to support the needs of experimental research and government networks. We have known all along IPv4 was a limited resource and that one day it would fully deplete. That day has come. For some geographic regions there is no remaining IPv4 address space to be distributed for general purpose use. Very soon, IPv4 will be fully depleted around the globe.

The Number Resource Organization has more information about the depletion of the IPv4 resource.

For us to move forward and continue adding new devices and services to the Internet, we must deploy IPv6. It was designed with the needs of a global commercial Internet in mind, and deploying it is the only way we can continue forward with an open and innovative Internet.

Where can I learn the basics of IPv6?

We will create some new material specifically explaining how IPv6 works. In the meantime, though, we thought these resources would be helpful (and please drop us a note if you know of other great tutorials/intros about IPv6):

• Slide deck explaining the basics of IPv6
• Wikipedia IPv6 entry
• 6Deploy tutorials

 

The ISOC Argentina Chapter also recently published an excellent book, IPv6 For All: A Guide for IPv6 Usage and Application in Different Environments, that provides a tutorial on getting started with IPv6 on Windows, Linux and Mac OS X.

Do you know of additional resources we should consider adding here? Or are there additional “basic” questions you feel we should answer here? If so, please send them to us.