THE USA is about to run out of IP addresses!

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What's the betting they decide to pre-empt (nick)someone else's?

As a species, we never learn. Plan ahead.

So who will they invade to get those IP addresses?

We planned ahead. IPv6 was designed in 1998 and has been up and running for years, although actual usage penetration is low.

*sniggers*

Seriously, though, despite it being around in 1998, as you said, it’s not been implemented - and now there’s this panic going on. People did not plan ahead, even though the tools were there.

Anybody seen an IPv6 capable consumer broadband router? I haven't.

Windows has had IPv6 installed as standard since Vista came out - it is possible to get an additional networking stack for XP. OS X has had it since 10.4, Linux since at least 2002. Router manufacturers have been slower to implement, and switches must also be updated. The DNS service has also been upgraded, and if no IPv6 address is found, it will drop back to IPv4 addressing.

The big problem is the ISPs and backbone providers needing to update their hardware, which is running slow in the USA, plus the consumers need to ensure that their local routers and their operating system have IPv6. Those still using XP will have more problems than most, as will users of older versions of OS X.

XP has had IPv6 support "built in" since SP1.

Of course, a lot of people just delete it

It's been in OS X since 10.2 (2002), apparently installed and active as default, certainly configurable from the Control Panels.

When I sat the CCNA a couple pf years back there wasn't a single question on IPv6 - which was lucky because I ignored that chapter. You'd think Cisco would be all over this stuff though :s

One other issue is that of DNS. I don't think there's a native IPv6 root server?

Am I right in thinking most mobile networks already use IPv6? The infrastructure was all new and custom built quite recently, and it was obvious from the offset that IPv4 wasn't going to cut it.

The sad thing is, I bet well over half of all assigned IPs are actually unused. A lot of companies will have 8, but only use 1 or 2. It's also in the nature of many configurations that you "lose" one IP for the network, one for the router and one for the broadcast - which leaves you only 5 "usable" out of every 8 assigned.

I think it's a question of "I'm all right Jack". Most people have all the IPv4 addresses they need, and most companies don't really look forward more than a year. All in all, it's rather reminiscent of the Millennium Bug. Everyone knows about the issue and there are protocols in place to deal with it, but all the expensive work is going to be left until the last second.

Until then, there's Toredo as a "transitional technology". What a fudge...

I notice the several printer manufacturers seem to think IPv6 is a licence to print money



Some ISP's do have IPv6 DNS resolvers (for example, a fairly extensive article) but I presume that's just translation rather than a full root server.

It has always been like that. Need to upgrade because of some change over, then you need this at $X.