Re: What transition?
IPv4 gets hobbled by nat hacks, due to address exhaustion.
And routing ports via NAPT is well understood by everybody doing anything with IPv4.
IPv6 fixes this.
Yes. It fixes a problem that had already been fixed, and creates an entire array of problems that require remediation, most of which won't actually be fixed creating a security nightmare.
And the "this requires that everybody be retrained" bit is actually the real killer, because IPv6 obsoletes any knowledge of how networking works. You have people in IT who have paid multiples of their yearly salary to go on all the CCNA courses and the people who have just figured it out themselves. The people who have been on the training courses (or their employers) don't want to pay for another set of training courses and the people who haven't done the training don't want their hard earned knowledge obsoleted. And the beancounters refuse to pay silly money for new equipment (firewalls, modems, wap's etc) because it costs too much.
Net result: practically nobody actually wants IPv6. Techs as a general rule would rather disable IPv6 and just use IPv4 for their internal networking, and generally do unless they specifically must work with IPv6 at a carrier level.
What would have been a better idea? The problem: IPv4's address space of 254*254*254*254= 4,162,314,256 addresses (four billion, one hundred sixty-two million, three hundred fourteen thousand, two hundred fifty-six addresses) is almost exhausted.
The solution: create IPv4+2, which has 6 coulons. 254*254*254*254*254*254 = 268,535,866,540,096 (two hundred sixty-eight trillion, five hundred thirty-five billion, eight hundred sixty-six million, five hundred forty thousand, ninety-six addresses)
Yes, this would require a massive rewrite of networking code on the same scale as IPv6. However, if it was written it would have been (and still would be) implemented with a speed that would make your head spin because everybody knows precisely how it works and isin't inconvenienced by it in the slightest as their existing ipv4 knowledge and practices are carried straight over.
Obviously it's a fudge but it would still give everybody alive on earth several hundred thousand addresses each. /problem solved.
Obviously, it'll never happen. But that's a practical and relatively moderate solution that could/would command immediate widespread support due to a positive message of why people should upgrade (look, it's just what you want! East upgrade! No training costs! Works just as you expect!) unlike the unwanted travesty that some people are trying to ram down everybodies throats with a negative message of "WE KNOW YOU DON'T WANT THIS BUT YOU HAVE TO HAVE IT ANYWAY OR ELSE."
How's that going again? Ah, yes. Predictably badly.
Biting the hand that feeds IT
