CircleID

What folks are not realizing is that IPv6 is already here. Even if the ISPs don't deploy it, transition mechanism already do IPv6 end-to-end. Is only a matter of time for the ISPs to realize that they better start offering transition services (such as 6to4 and Teredo relays) from their own networks, instead of having their users using external relays, which means extra upstream bandwidth, and longer delays.

See my latest slides at the RIPE meeting plenary.

Do the math. Aggregation is not the biggest concern. IPv4 has 2^32 addresses, about 3 billion of which are usable for (unicast) Internet. A worst-case v4 global routing table will have a few million entries at most. Which is just a single order of magnitude more than we have today. Large carriers already have 3 times more routes inside their own network than the global Internet currently has.

Getting more addresses when we've run out is by far the biggest issue. Turning people away just because there's nothing more to be had is far worse than the threat of 'cores melting down'. In order to get the next billion people online we'll need to be able to assign them a number first.

First get the blocks of space you can route, then worry about how complex that might become - however complicated that may turn out to be. An adequate worldwide migration to v6 is about 5 years away if I'm very optimistic, 10 years being more likely. So aside from migrating to v6 we also need to worry about how we keep v4 running.