IPv6 May Already Be Irrelevant - But So is Moving Off IPv4, Argues APNIC's Chief Scientist

The chief scientist of the Asia Pacific Network Information Center has a theory about why the world hasn't moved to IPv6. From a report: In a lengthy post to the center's blog, Geoff Huston recounts that the main reason for the development of IPv6 was a fear the world would run out of IP addresses, hampering the growth of the internet. But IPv6 represented evolution -- not revolution. 'The bottom line was that IPv6 did not offer any new functionality that was not already present in IPv4. It did not introduce any significant changes to the operation of IP. It was just IP, with larger addresses,' Huston wrote.

IPv6's designers assumed that the protocol would take off because demand for IPv4 was soaring. But in the years after IPv6 debuted, Huston observes, 'There was no need to give the transition much thought.' Internetworking wonks assumed applications, hosts, and networks would become dual stack and support IPv6 alongside IPv4, before phasing out the latter. But then mobile internet usage exploded, and network operators had to scale to meet unprecedented demand created by devices like the iPhone. 'We could either concentrate our resources on meeting the incessant demands of scaling, or we could work on IPv6 deployment,' Huston wrote.

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