To put this in to some kind of context check out this article from wired.com it kinda explain's it neatly,
In other web-related news, the internet is running out of places. As it turns out, the supply of IP addresses is exhausted, and I’m feeling pretty run-down myself. In layman’s terms, consider the internet as a giant parking lot, with a huge but finite number of parking spaces, each representing the IP address of a particular internet server or other device. There are only a few parking spaces left, and if you want to have a place to park your intercar, you’re going to have to … HEY! That guy just totally grabbed your space! You were signalling and everything! Oh, man, and of course it’s a Beemer. “I can’t wait for a space, because I have a BMW and I’m soooo important!” Douche. Luckily, you’re currently driving in Parking Lot 4, and Parking Lot 6 is just across the street. Parking Lot 6 has enough parking spaces for every star in the entire universe, with enough left over for every YouTube cover of “Poker Face.” In fact, Parking Lot 6 has been sitting there across the street, nearly empty, since 1998. So why not just go and park in Parking Lot 6? Well, because the parking lots aren’t inter-compatible. You can’t drive on Parking Lot 6 with Parking Lot 4 tires — that’s just silly. The good news is, most vehicles being sold today come with a nice set of Parking Lot 6 tires stored in the trunk, waiting to be switched out at will. The bad news is, remember explaining to your mom about the whole digital-television thing? And how to get Wi-Fi to work? And why she can’t just put Blu-ray discs in her old DVD player? Well, pull on your explaining boots, because this one’s going to be a toughie.
Taken from wired.com
So is the internet going to suddenly disappear in a delayed Y2K armageddon puff of smoke? Well no but their could be problems. Without getting too technical just logistically changing the billions of switches routers and servers that control the internet is going to be a massive task. For us plain old internet users IPv6 looks like it won't massively effect us, the internet should continue to work for us - but it may mean that some parts of the internet become unavailable. Some experts have indicated that the internet will become a lot more "sticky" making simple online tasks a lot more complex.
Our first port of call in getting IPv6 ready is our ISP which happens to be BT, heres a quote from ISP review from a BT spokesperson;
A BT Spokesperson told ISPreview.co.uk:
"BT has been planning for the introduction of Internet Protocol Version 6 (IPv6) for some time now. We already have a large IPv6 address block allocated to it and are planning to enable the network with IPv6 capability during 2011/2012, subject to our customers' requirements. We foresee a predictable steady demand rather than a rush. Current predictions are for IPv4 addresses to run out circa 2012. After that we'll see a steady growth in usage of IPv6. At worse it will match the current usage trends of IPv4 growth. We believe that it will start lower than that as ISPs like BT use "carrier grade Network Address Translation" to delay the need to use IPv6.BT's 21cn equipment is IPv6 ready. We just need to turn it on when the time is right; that is when there is clear customer demand and it is commercially viable. We have also run several IPv6 trials on several of our networks for extended periods."
One things for sure the online companies are certainly in for an interesting ride, and you can be assured we'll be keeping a hawk eye on these developments to make sure that we're ahead of the game for both our clients business and our own.
