Axel Pawlik is the managing director of the Amsterdam-based Réseaux IP Européens Network Coordination Centre, which was recently involved in World IPv6 day on June 8th, 2011. While you may have been absolutely unaware of it, it was a day when many companies and services – Google, Yahoo, Facebook and Microsoft Bing among the largest – temporarily trialled the more complex IPv6 standard in a day-long, international event. The day went without a hitch, but as we found out when we sat down with Pawlik, complete IPv6 introduction will be a long and complicated process, with many implications for gamers…
If we carried on as we are with IPv4, when are we expected to completely run out of IP addresses?
It cannot be predicted exactly, but at the current rate of IPv4 allocation, the RIPE NCC would expect that IPv4 resources in its region will be exhausted by the second half of 2011. It is likely that all regions around the world may run out of IPv4 addresses by 2013. In fact, in April of this year APNIC, the Regional Internet Registry (RIR) for the Asia Pacific region, announced the release of its last block of IPv4 addresses, effectively meaning they are out of IPv4 resources already.
How many IP addresses can exist at once under IPv4, and how many, comparatively, under IPv6?
There are around 4.2 billion IPv4 addresses in existence; in comparison, the number of IPv6 addresses available is roughly 340 trillion, trillion, trillion.
The current protocol is know as IPv4, and the next one is IPv6. What happened to IPv5?
After IPv4, the original IP standard, there were experiments with a second generation protocol. It was never officially named IPv5 but many will allude to it as just that. It was never rolled out on a large scale and it didn’t go any further than commercial projects. As it became apparent we would run out of IPv4, work began on IPv6 and it became the next industry adopted version of Internet Protocol.
How will the big changeover work, and when exactly will it happen? Is the roll-out worldwide, or in selected zones?
The aim should now be to drive the adoption of native IPv6 networks all around the world if it is not already happening. IPv4 resources are depleting at different rates around the world, Asia Pacific has already reached its last block of IPv4 address, but as it stands AfriNIC, the Regional Internet Registry for Africa, will be the last RIR with IPv4 addresses available. Each RIR is responsible for serving its own geographical region and when its IPv4 resources are exhausted, there will only be IPv6 left.
What could be some of the more serious or interesting side effects of wholesale IP changeover?
The biggest potential side effect if we don’t achieve global adoption of IPv6 would be the creation of a two-tiered Internet, one running on IPv4 and one on IPv6. This would have a dramatic impact on the global Internet economy and business and consumers around the world.
What are, in your opinion, the specific considerations for gamers when the switchover happens?
There are two main considerations for the gamer when it comes to IPv6 adoption.
Gamers need to push manufacturers to make devices that are IPv6 ready and ISPs to have IPv6 enabled networks to allow for connection. If they don’t, gamers may not be able to communicate with each other via the Internet, as devices only running IPv4 will not be compatible with those only on IPv6. This could impact upon the growing online multi-player game industry as certain users will be “cut off” from others.
Shite