This is part of my series on (Trying to) foresee IPv6 deployment.
[Citation needed here] said that important content will still be available over IPv4 for many years. Well, in my opinion, it depends of what you call ”’important”’. Certainly, gmail, facebook and their likes will be able to maintain their content available on the IPv4 cloud, based on the stocks of IPv4 addresses they already hold. In my opinion however, this leaves aside two classes of “important” content:
- The next Facebook, or Google, or Youtube. If you create a new killer app ”now”, and you need to deploy thousands of servers across the world to handle the load, will you be able to get enough IPv4 adresses ? I very much doubt so. At the very least, it will add to the bill.
- (Your community here). Certainly, you’re playing at the tennis club of your block, or you’re going at the library, or the bowling, or the cafe, the scuba diving club, or whatever you like to do when you’re not working or at home. This is your social life, and certainly this is ”’important”’ for ”you”. Many of these organizations have a web site, often run by a technically-minded volunteer, and part of them are running on a dedicated server. For exemple, OVH in France (and in Europe), is hosting 80 000 servers, many of them quite cheap (less than 30 € / month), and many of them I suspect are running forums, blogs and small not-for-the-profit organizations web sites.
This is part of my series on (Trying to) foresee IPv6 deployment.
[Citation needed here] said that important content will still be available over IPv4 for many years. Well, in my opinion, it depends of what you call ”’important”’. Certainly, gmail, facebook and their likes will be able to maintain their content available on the IPv4 cloud, based on the stocks of IPv4 addresses they already hold. In my opinion however, this leaves aside two classes of “important” content:
The point is that that kind of organizations come and go, so there’s always a need to bring new servers on line, as witnessed by the economic performance of the hosting companies.
Now how long will it be possible to get IPv4 addresses for these servers after the RIR depletion ? Years ? Month ? That may be quickly complicated and / or too expensive for what you’re willing or able to pay. On the other hand, if you’re setting up a server for one or two dozens of people, why not give a go for IPv6 and help them to get IPv6 at their place ? May be you can reach them all over the phone, and if you can do it once, you can do it for everyone, so it won’t be that difficult.
The extreme case is the high school tech club, where you will do it for the sake of the experiment.
In conclusion, while I agree that ”big” content will be available over IPv4 for the years to come, it’s in my opinion very likely that some part of the content ”important to you” will go more quickly to IPv6-only, the pain being ease by a direct connection (in the human sense, not the network one) between the user and the server’s administrator.