Sometimes it seems we are running low on everything at the same time: money, rare metals, oil... But whether you believe in Peak Oil or not, there is one 'Peak' the whole world agrees on: we are running out of IP addresses. And fast too. On 3 February 2011 the last five blocks of IPv4 addresses were allocated to the Regional Internet Registries (RIR). There are no more in stock [red line in the graphic below]. The good news is the industry has seen this coming already for many years. And there is a rescue plan. The bad news: it is the only plan and until now it has not been embraced very widely.
Different classes of users
In a new EBU Technical Review article , Cisco engineer Thomas Kernen explains how the transition to IPv6 can impact current services, including those of content providers such as broadcasters. As IPv4 and IPv6 are expected to coexist for many years, we may need to classify internet users according to the type of address(es) they hold: IPv4, Shared IPv4, IPv6 or any mix of those. Some services may work better for some of those groups of users. One example mentioned in the paper relates to the use of AJAX technology, which Thomas argues is more suited for IPv6 than IPv4 environments. |  |
Questions to ask
Other questions content providers should ask themselves include if there are any local regulations enforcing some kind of 'universal access' for their audience and if they wish third-party service providers to handle the translation of IPv6 to IPv4 on their behalf or not.
Read the full article here .