Working on updating Networking for Systems Administrators. The gentle “yes you need IPv6” paragraph in the first edition is getting an update to something a little more… ranty.
Commercial operating systems now default to IPv6, falling back to IPv4 only if IPv6 is unavailable. New networks, especially phone networks, are often IPv6-only. Much of the southern hemisphere, much of Asia, and much of the human race? IPv6-only. Their IPv4 connectivity is a kludge of proxies, carrier-grade NAT, 464xlat, and a melange of workarounds that I’d call black magic if the Evil Wizards Union wouldn’t sue me for slander. These ramshackle measures require constant maintenance and adjustment. Such network operators are desperately maintaining their trickery until the day the majority of traffic uses IPv6 and they can dismiss IPv4-only sites as outmoded oddities.
When is that coming? We don’t know exactly, but Google reports that 45% of all their Internet traffic is IPv6.
My infrastructure is all IPv6, except for my home ISP, where I’ve chosen robust IPv4-only service over “dual stack with nine fives uptime.” But 13 more print sponsors on this book and I have to do another challenge coin.