Why Do We Need IPv6?

Well, the short answer is, because we need to communicate, and our current system isn’t really cutting it anymore—kind of like how the Pony Express can’t compete with airmail. Just look at how much time and effort we’ve invested in coming up with slick new ways to conserve bandwidth and IP addresses. We’ve even come up with Variable Length Subnet Masks (VLSMs) in our struggle to overcome the worsening address drought.

It’s reality—the number of people and devices that connect to networks increases each and every day. That’s not a bad thing at all—we’re finding new and exciting ways to communicate to more people all the time, and that’s a good thing. In fact, it’s a basic human need. But the forecast isn’t exactly blue skies and sunshine because, as I alluded to in this chapter’s introduction, IPv4, upon which our ability to communicate is presently dependent, is going to run out of addresses for us to use. IPv4 has only about 4.3 billion addresses available—in theory, and we know that we don’t even get to use all of those. There really are only about 250 million addresses that can be assigned to devices. Sure, the use of Classless Inter-Domain Routing (CIDR) and Network Address Translation (NAT) has helped to extend the inevitable dearth of addresses, but we
will run out of them, and it’s going to happen within a few years. China is barely online, and we know there’s a huge population of people and corporations there that surely want to be. There are a lot of reports that give us all kinds of numbers, but all you really need to think about to convince yourself that I’m not just being an alarmist is the fact that there are about 6.5 billion people in the world today, and it’s estimated that just over 10 percent of that population is connected to the Internet—wow! That statistic is basically screaming at us the ugly truth that based on IPv4’s capacity, every person can’t even have a computer—let alone all the other devices we use with them. I have more than one computer, and it’s pretty likely you do too. And I’m not even including in the mix phones, laptops, game consoles, fax machines, routers, switches, and a mother lode of other devices we use every day! So I think I’ve made it pretty clear that we’ve got to do something before we run out of addresses and lose the ability to connect with each other as we know it. And that “something” just happens to be implementing IPv6.

Background

Currently Sanjay is working as an IT Consultant at Center for Poverty Analysis (CEPA) implementing web2 technologies for knowledge sharing on poverty analysis in Sri Lanka. Sanjay is also providing his expertises to optimize CEPA's IT infrastructure with latest security and Internet technology enhancements. Prior to joining CEPA he was the head of operations at USAid's Last Mile Initiative (USAID-LMI) which is a broadband Internet (WiFi/3G) service deployment project in Sri Lanka. Sanjay worked at Info-Share (Gte) Ltd as a project manager of Microsoft Unlimited Potential project developing industry specific IT curriculums focused on delivering job oriented ICT skills for Sri Lankan rural youth. He was also At the Distance Education for Public Servants or DEPS project as the head of IT which aimed at providing ICT based distance learning solutions to public servants in Sri Lanka. Sanjay is also a systems & network security consultant for USAID – ARD Anti-Corruption Program and under this Program he has been engaged in need analysis for case management system and developing ICT Policy for Auditor General’s department and Commission to Investigate Allegations of Bribery or Corruption in Sri Lanka. He was heading the engineering and training division at InfoShare as the key person to setup Microsoft Groove hosting management system (a groupware & project management system) for USAID development partners in Sri Lanka.