It's well known now that the reservoir of unallocated IP version 4 address space will be empty within a few years, so IP version 6 must now be deployed. Unfortunately this has already taken too long, so there will be a considerable period during which IPv4 and IPv6 will coexist and interoperate. At the same time, the expected rapid growth unleashed by IPv6 will make a hard problem - site multihoming - even harder.
For a check on your access to dual-stack sites (that is, sites offering both IPv4 and IPv6 service) click here.
For a window about the World IPv6 Launch on 6/6/2012, click here.
We are working on these issues, as part of a wider community including:
Additionally, there are issues in the scaling of the Internet's wide-area inter-domain routing system based on the BGP4 protocol. We have explored one aspect of this in Brian E. Carpenter, Observed Relationships between Size Measures of the Internet, ACM SIGCOMM CCR, 39(2) (April 2009) 6-12.
Page updated 2012-12-19. Disclaimer