Basically what the title says. Here’s the thing: address exhaustion is a solved problem. NAT already took care of this via RFC 1631. While initially presented as a temporary fix, anyone who thinks it’s going anywhere at this point is simply wrong. Something might replace IPv4 as the default at some point, but it’s not going to be IPv6.
And then there are the downsides of IPv6:
- Not all legacy equipment likes IPv6. Yes, there’s a lot of it out there.
- “Nobody” remembers an IPv6 address. I know my IPv4 address, and I’m sure many others do too. Do you know your IPv6 address, though?
- Everything already supports IPv4
- For IPv6 to fully replace IPv4, practically everything needs to move over. De facto standards don’t change very easily. There’s a reason why QWERTY keyboards, ASCII character tables, and E-mail are still around, despite alternatives technically being “better”.
- Dealing with dual network stacks in the interim is annoying.
Sure, IPv6 is nice and all. But as an addition rather than as a replacement. I’ve disabled it by default for the past 10 years, as it tends to clutter up my ifconfig overview, and I’ve had no ill effects.
Source: Network engineer.
As a network engineer you should be aware that ipv4 doesn’t have enough addresses (thanks Microsoft and “the internet of things” for this) and that the temporary fix is temporary, all new systems and devices do support ipv6 for a reason. And using ipv4 in the internal networks of a company/facility is absolutely fine if there is equipment that doesn’t, the stuff usually doesn’t need to connect to the outside anyway.
You don’t remember a ipv4 either, you usually connect to stuff with a domain. The ipv4 you remember is probably just the default router website address, as your ipv4 does change regularly, at least the relevant one to the outside.
Btw ASCII is absolutely outdated for the most part, most shit nowadays is done in UTF-8 (Unicode) as ASCII lacks a load of character.
QWERTY is still around because the difference to the other options is basically nonexistent and doesn’t justify the relearning of writing on a PC for millions of people, same with every other keyboard layout commonly used today like QUERTZ or AZERTY.
Currently the fix still holds up, wich is great, but it won’t do so forever, we literally hook up more and more stuff to the internet and everything needs a IP… From the “Smart” light bulb to the newest car receiving radio over the internet, sending emergency messages over the internet and so on. We will someday run out of ipv4 capacity.
Source: same field of word (i btw absolutely understand that its annoying as shit, cause it is, but we won’t get around it some day)