The internet obviously uses IPv4 currently and as we all know the world is running out of addresses and the obviously solution to the problem is replace IPv4 with IPv6, however based on the fact that we are talking about the internet and not just some little home network or even something bigger like an enterprise, the issue becomes extremely complicated.
Changing the internet to use IPv6 would probably in actual fact be a total no no because it would be damn near if not completely impossible to complete the task and then the question of the actual deployment would be an issue.
IPv4 and IPv6 are obviously incompatible, so the only way to complete the task would be to run the whole project overnight or something, because otherwise all the people who didn’t migrate wouldn’t be able to access the v6 resources and sites and vice versa.
So this leaves a dillema – What can be done? I have a solution personally and that is to reclaim the IP addresses.
A perfect example of this is Xerox where I work. All of our PC’s use the 13.x.x.x IP address range because Xerox own the whole Class A range. I personally think that this shouldn’t be allowed and that companies that do this should be forced to change to use 10.x.x.x range and then the 13.x.x.x addresses that are not used by internet facing services like web servers etc that are reclaimed from the internal clients can be re-issued on the internet.
I think doing this would create a massive number of addresses to become available again, however who has the power to do all of this? I know that RIPE potentially have some level of power in this field, however they don’t have enough power, and no power in the worldwide scene.