Just how much IP V6 addressing is really in typical use out there?
I see that Linux/UNIX seems to be ready for this. But I don't see the readiness as much as the Windows side. Especially not for desktop user systems.
In my wanderings I have not seen IPV6 widely implemented or used.
Personally, I'm not quite thrilled with the addresses syntax as it is longer, and reminds me of MAC addresses with all the :'s.
Secondary question: Are we all ready to use IPV6 in our daily lives?
Thanks.
OS support is probably not the concern. Vista, XP, Solaris 10 and Linux all support IPv6, and the root DNS servers have all been updated to support AAAA records.
There are three things that are more likely to act as barriers to adoption.
Network support: Upgrading infrastructure to support IPv6 is a massive undertaking. It probably won't be complete for years. Until then, there will be a need to tunnel; initially, IPv6 tunneled over IPv4; eventually the reverse as the IPv6 connected network becomes larger than the IPv4.
Application support: In a perfect world, most consumer facing applications shouldn't care about Layer 3; that's what DNS is for. Unfortunately, there are plenty of applications out there written with IP addresses hardcoded into them, that use IP addresses in their data structures, etc. Re-writing or replacing these tools will also take a very long time.
NAT: One of the main design goals of IPv6 was to overcome the depletion of IPv4 space. Unfortunately, before IPv6 could be finalised and implemented, NAT combined with RFC 1918 address space provided a way for companies and individuals to connect large numbers of devices to the public internet without the need for registered address space. Like it or loathe it, NAT has grown from a stop-gap solution to a 'feature' of IPv4, with people even relying upon it for security. More discussion can be found in this question.
From Microsoft's IPv6 page:
That doesn't sound too bad to me. Admittedly it doesn't say how well it's supported, but that's a different matter.
As for actual use: not a lot, in my experience.
It's out there, it just takes a smidge more effort since many upstream providers aren't pushing it out. For organization level, setting up a SIXXS tunnel to a routing device (BSD box works well) is fairly simple. For an individual Windows user, setting up a Hexago tunnel is a no-brainer. IPv6 is becoming quite accessible now and I usually find that I get better performance from the IPv6 versions of sites, despite having the extra hops through a tunnel.
According to stats of the AMS-IX, the Amsterdam Internet Exchange (one of the bigger global internet exchanges), the current volume of IPv6 traffic they're processing is around 1 Gbit/s average (graph), on a average total traffic (IPv4 + IPv6) of 436 Gbit/s (graph).
So, traffic levels are still at about 0.23% of IPv4. In the past year IPv6 traffic through AMS-IX has increased about 1000%, but there's still a long way to go.
My medium-sized webdev company has deployed IPv6 locally and remotely. Locally through a SixXs provided tunnel and subnet, and remotely through native IPv6 provided by our hosting provider. In my experience, a lot of companies are working on it, and will help you if you ask them.
It's quite easy, once you know how IPv6 works, to deploy it. The big problem is the chicken and egg dilemma, and convincing management to let you deploy it. I'm glad my company allowed me to spend time on it. I was able to convince them that as a webdev company we need to be 'enablers' and be ready for upcoming technologies. Therefore, to push IPv6 now allows us to work out the kinks before our customers start asking.
Google has implemented IPv6 on there search services and is available already to those with IPv6 Connections.
Most newer network hardware contains support for IPv6, as do most modern operating systems and a number of other applications (browsers, ftp clients, etc.) as well. But many routers in use (including, I believe, most wireless routers) do not. There would need to be an awful lot of hardware replacement before IPv6 really takes hold.
If they've done it right, using IPv6 in our daily lives should be transparent (to users, anyway, not so much for developers of network appliances or software).
It is still in the early adoption phase certainly, but there is starting to be a lot of movement because the wall at the end of ipv4 becoming more visible. For our part (a small regional ISP), it's rather like moving from a studio apartment to a large estate. While we're still in the early stages ourselves, it's already clear it's going to make some aspects of network management easier with extra the breathing room.
Pertaining to question #1: Not much, really. Microsoft drives IPv6 adoption at the moment (for shame it has to be them, but there you go.)
Pertaining to question #2: No, we're not.
You can find a shed load of information about IPv6, including penetration statistics, at http://icons.apnic.net/display/IPv6/Home
I have seen very little implementation of IPv6 outside the Mac OS X nodes on my home LAN, and even then, my router doesn't support IPv6, so it amounts to nothing.
Are we ready? Sure. But I don't think it's going to be an easy transition. And you're quite right in saying that the unwieldy addressing scheme will more or less mandate host name resolution, even on a small network (Netbios, Bonjour, etc).
Router manufacturers adopted "draft 802.11n" because it was faster. Faster means something to the consumer. Try to tell them that your new, more expensive router supports IPv6 on the other hand...
Incidentally, Mac OS X has supported IPv6 since 2002 with 10.2 Jaguar (cite http://www.join.uni-muenster.de/Implementationen/Betriebsysteme.php?lang=en ).