Head for the hills, the sky is falling! Or at least, we’re running out of IPv4 address space. In English, that means that if things continue at the present rate in 2 years there will be no more unassigned Internet addresses available. That is, unless the world’s infrastructure switches over to the new version of the Internet Protocol, IPv6. IPv6 uses 128-bit addresses instead of 32-bit addresses, so there are literally a billion billion billion times as many addresses available. Pretty much one for every speck of dust on the planet, not to mention the universe. So, while only 10% of the IPv4 address space is left, IPv6 is less than 0.01% depleted. (Much, much less than that, but more zeros make for an awful headline.)
So, are you ready? Not many ISPs provide IPv6 service yet. Comcast is the only commercial ISP I’ve heard of planning deployments. The US government is under a mandate to move to IPv6 over the next couple of years. In the mean time, private networks can get a head start by using a service such as Hurricane Electric‘s Tunnel Broker. That’s what I’ve done. As of a few weeks ago qotw.net is now fully IPv6 ready. I also have this handy certificate to prove just how much I know about the IPv6 deployment:
Get yours today and join the next generation Internet!
Note: If you’re on a normal ISP connection the HE service is a little too heavy duty for you. I suggest either the tunnel service from go6 or configuring 6to4 tunneling.