IPv6 Anytime Soon? Don't Bet on It
There's maybe never been a better time to be a network engineer--that is, provided you have IPv6 experience. Businesses are crying out for individuals to help create next-generation networking circuits, and the heat has been turned up as World IPv6 Day approaches in June, during which many of the Internet’s most popular properties will open IPv6 entrances to give the technology the biggest test it’s ever had.
Internet Protocol version 6, known as IPv6, is the new kid on the block when it comes to Internet addressing, the system by which computers can be uniquely identified on the Internet and data routed through to them. It offers so many Internet addresses that we need a word so little used that it doesn't even appear in dictionaries right now: IPv6 offers over well 340 undecillion addresses.
However, IPv6 has actually been around since the late 1990s, when it was created to supersede the older v4 of the Internet Protocol scheme (IPv4). The rapid implementation of IPv6 at the moment has been made imperative by the recent depletion of IPv4 addresses. Although IPv6 is arguably on its way (Verizon and Comcast recently began commercial trials, for example), there are a surprising number of bananas in the road.
