Are you ready for IPv6?

Veteran ISP executive John Curran is the new president and CEO of the American Registry for Internet Numbers, a coordinating body that allocates IP addresses and related autonomous system numbers to carriers and enterprises in North America. In an interview with NetworkWorld.com, Curran said the depletion of IPv4 is the most pressing issue facing the Internet community. IPv4 is expected to run out of addresses in 2012, and there is no time to waste in moving to IPv6.

"Yes, we are going to run out of free IPv4 addresses, and organizations that want to be able to make use of the Internet will need to support IPv6," he told NetworkWorld.com.

Curran says plenty of businesses are building interfaces and don't realize they have to move to IPv6. Nevertheless, there's a lot of work going on, Curran says. Web servers, mail servers, firewalls and intrusion-detection systems that support IPv6 are beginning to make their way into systems. But it's still not enough to be prepared for the transition in two years.

His advice to businesses: "Unless they want to get caught on a backwater of the Internet, they need to take their public-facing Internet services--the ones that support their partners and customers--and make them both IPv4 and IPv6 enabled. It's not that hard to do, but it does require work."

For more on IPv6:
- check out this NetworkWorld.com article

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