In an article on itwire.com, Verizon Business has announced plans to be fully IPv6 compliant in the United States by the end of 2008, and worldwide by the end of 2009.

Verizon is leading the move to IPv6, which still has many fearing the transition, because many previously unforeseen problems are cropping up in this age of everything from the family computer to the washing machine in the laundry room being connected to the internet, and requesting an IP address.

The lack of unused addresses is the primary reason for the move, as this change to universal connectivity has made addresses short in supply. One of the reasons many want to move to the scheme, which will bring 3.4 times 10 to the 38th power addresses into play, which means that there would be about 5 times 10 to the 28th power addresses for each of the 6.5 billion people on the planet. Effectively this will make a surfeit of addresses for any foreseeable future, and eliminate any need for network address translation. The results are both good and bad for this. It will mean that every item in your house will be able to be reached directly from anywhere on the internet, but it also removes a layer of protection from problems and attacks from the outside.

The end result will be one of greater control over world connectivity, but in the interim, some amount of chaos will ensue. It would be simpler if all of the work could be done without connection, and then, when complete, a switch could be pulled and all connections would immediately respond to the new address scheme. Such will not be the case.

As the change takes place, Verizon will be attempting to do what was explained earlier to the best of its ability, which is to run that IPv4, the current standard scheme, in parallel with the new build-out.  During this time, nothing will be made obsolete. As soon as the version 6 scheme is fully implemented, many items will be obsolete, as they will no longer correctly respond to traffic sent and received. Older operating systems will also have to have new TCP-IP utilities and new stacks, to be able to respond correctly.

The internet is getting up in years, starting to show some age, and has become more widespread in its use than the original architects at DARPA could have anticipated - it will be an exciting, yet frustrating, time during the coming growing pains.

Tags: internet, internet addressing scheme, ipv4, ipv6, darpa, verizon, network address translation, internet connected household appliances