What you need to know about IPv6

IPv6 is already used inside many large corporations. I’ve been working on programming and supporting it for years myself on internet switches, etc. Macs and PCs have also supported it for a long time now. The final pieces are finally starting to fall into place (probably only because they will have to). Once your ISP supports it, and can gateway to those sites which don’t support it yet, it will be mostly invisible to the average user, though you will have a new internet address that doesn’t look much like the current IP addresses. I think its benefits, though, are mostly for infrastructure and the ability to support many more devices than currently can use the IPv4 network. As long as your devices support it (and most do these days, or will with a simple software upgrade), it will be an easy change, though it will be disruptive — how disruptive will depend on the ISP.

I do disagree with one thing in the article — she mentions that most routers have to be upgraded to support IPv6. That’s not true for most routers in the networks now — it would just have to be turned on and used. IPv6 has been present in almost all equipment, enterprise-level and up for years now. It’s the disruption that will initially be caused that has so far prevented this from being done. I think ISPs are also trying to avoid the expense/trouble of upgrading billions of cable modems, DSL modems, and similar. Most could be simply updated with software, though it’s a VERY big rollout. There are many 10-year-old cable modems and similar out there, though. I just had an upgrade a couple months ago when going to even faster cable internet, but until then, I was using the same modem I had installed when I first got fast internet in 2002.

I’m looking forward to it, though. It will make having a permanent IP address much less expensive and much more useful.