IPv6: Yes, My Head is in the Sand

There has been a fair amount of chatter about the depleting IPv4 address space how the adoption of IPv6 is looming. If you haven't seen it, check out the post at Howfunky.com on "The Ostrich Effect". Of particular interest is how a lot of network and system  administrators are ignoring IPv6 all together, and I admit I’m one of them.  My head is firmly entrenched in the sand. While it might not be the best approach, I’ll explain why I am where I am.

First, I’m not going to tell you that I don’t think IPv6 will stick. It will. Also, I find it pretty interesting and would love to be able to meet it head on when the time comes to make the transition.  But here’s the issue – I don’t see the pressing need right this moment for the infrastructure I work with and I have other projects that need my time and attention first.  IPv6 just isn’t an emergency.

For the enterprise that I manage, our public facing Internet presence is very small.  I have two /28 ranges assigned and I’m barely using half of those addresses as it is.  I predict that I won’t need any additional addresses anytime soon.  Internally, we are privately addressed and we have several legacy applications that will never be rewritten or patched to support IPv6.

Of course, I know that some of our newer servers and workstations are automatically establishing IPv6 addresses for themselves and we should be utilizing that by embracing the dual stack technology that’s built into our newer Windows machines.  If nothing else, I should have a better handle on what going on automatically when those machines connect to our network.

I also know that at some point we’ll need external IPv6 addresses on the ‘net, so others who are using the protocol can access our mail and web servers.  I’m sort of hoping that our ISP will contact me one day and say “Here! These IPv6 addresses are for you and this is what you do with them!"

Wishful thinking I know.  But right now, that’s all I can afford.