Remember Analog TV Transmission?  A thing of the past?

I grew up with an analog B&W television.  Rabbit ears and all.  Hey, it worked.  But it was sad to see analog transmission come to an end.

The moral of the story:  Technology has changed, and we must move ahead.

And that includes the conventional IPv4.

What’s the difference between IPv4 and IPv6?

IPv4 has a 32-bit address space which has up to 4.3 billion addresses (some are reserved).   With over 6 billion people on this planet, and as many computers, servers, network devices, and mobile devices out there, there is currently less than six per cent of the IPv4 address block remaining free.  (Heh heh, I am hogging a few myself!)

The use of NAT (Network Address Translation) technology has delayed the IPv4 crunch for several years but the increased use of smartphone devices has changed that, especially in emerging markets.

IPv6 offers 128-bit addresses.  So 2¹²⁸  (or 2 to the power of 128) ends up being 340,282,366,920,938,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 unique IP addresses!  That’s a lot more than 4.3 billion.

Since IPv4 and the Internet “started” with the US Military, it’s only natural that they will be the first to upgrade.

A directive from Vivek Kundra, the US Chief Information Officer states:

• Upgrade public/external facing servers and services (e.g. web, email, DNS, ISP services, etc) to operationally use native IPv6 by the end of FY 2012*
• Upgrade internal client applications that communicate with public Internet servers and supporting enterprise networks to operationally use native IPv6 by the end of FY 2014

* Also stated was:

To ensure interoperability, it is expected that agencies will also continue running IPv4 into the foreseeable future

The end of 2012 for external addresses?  The end of 2014 for internal servers and PCs?

That’s a pretty aggressive schedule.

It’s not as simple as adding a telephone area code overlay in North America.

All I can say is Good Luck to everyone, and let the Consultants earn the big bucks!