FutureNet 2009: IPv6 coming, ready or not
Although many businesses say they see no economic advantage to deploying IPv6 over their networks, several panelists at this year's FutureNet said that they soon may not have a choice.
IPv6 is a next-generation Internet layer protocol that was designed by the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) to solve the problem of IP address depletion under the current Internet layer protocol, IPv4. John Curran, the chairman of the board of trustees at the American Registry for Internet Numbers, said the Internet will run out of IPv4 addresses if they continue to be used at their current pace. Needless to say, Curran thinks this will cause some significant problems.
"On the day when we run out of addresses, none of you are going to notice it on that day, but it's the months that follow that turn out to be the problem," he said at this week's FutureNet conference in Boston, MA. "Backbones not going to be able to add customers unless they find more address space… the pieces you deal with going to be smaller and the routing table going to pay the price."
