The Mayans had foresight that 2012 is going to be an epochal year. Now whether you agree the world is going to end or carry on is up to you. However what we do know is that the telecom skin encircling the planet, aka the Internet, will be suffering if we do not act now.

As the 4 billion IPv4 addresses run out sometime early next decade (current estimates: 2011-2012), the Internet will stop growing if we do not find ways to tackle the exhaust. The successor to IPv4 - IPv6 - allows 340 undecillion addresses or more than 50 billion billion billion per person on earth. Phew! However, the transition from IPv4 to IPv6 is not trivial and in a previous post I pointed out Large-Scale NAT (LSN) as one solution, which was also mentioned by Jeff Doyle of Network World. While LSN is a way to ‘preserve’ the life of IPv4 investments, new technologies are needed to ‘prepare’ for IPv4 and IPv6 co-existence. Both of these approaches will pan out over many years, and in the interim providers need to continue to ‘prosper’ from the boundless opportunities of the Internet.

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