Carla Schroder writes "IPv6 is halfway here, so network administrators need to learn their way around it whether they want to or not. Adoption has been slower in the United States because we possess the lion's share of IPv4 addresses, but even so, someday IPv4 is going away for good. And, there is more to it than just increasing the pool of available addresses. IPv6 has enough improvements over IPv4 to make it worth the change even if we weren't running out of IPV4 addresses, such as built-in IPSec, simplified routing and administration, and scalability that IPv4 simply can't support. We're moving into gigabyte and multi-gigabyte backbones, and high-demand real-time services like voice-over-IP and streaming audio and video that require sophisticated QoS (quality of service) and bandwidth prioritization. IPv6 can handle these, IPv4 can't." Read on for the rest of Carla's review.
