Here's a link to think about: http://www.circleid.com/posts/20090609_verizon_mandates_ipv6_support_for_next_gen_cell_phones/ http://www.circleid.com/posts/2009

Here's a link to think about: http://www.circleid.com/posts/20090609_verizon_mandates_ipv6_support_for_next_gen_cell_phones/ http://www.circleid.com/posts/20090609_verizon_mandates_ipv6... "The device shall support IPv6. The device may support IPv4" This is requirements for the LTE devices from Verizon. Of course all the devices being linux-based, I expect dualstack for quite some time. As for provider-independent addresses, I understand you should be able to get /48: http://www.ripe.net/ripe/docs/ripe-483.html http://www.ripe.net/ripe/docs/ripe-483.html As for the Locator-ID split problem (which what the BGP scaling problem is about), there are a number of experiments going on at the moment. LISP (http://tools.ietf.org/html/draft-farinacci-lisp http://tools.ietf.org/html/draft-farinacci-lisp) is one of them. There was a few more but with less memorable names (edit: memorable for me. because I did hear more about LISP) Of course the world is not going to end. It will just start developing an ever increasing slice of IPv6-only, whereas IPv4 growth is bounded. Google, Facebook, YouTube, Netflix are already IPv6-enabled. This is "The Internet" for your average mom and pop consumer type. And maintaining the NATs with the few million hosts behind is a bit of work. So I would not be surprised if a cheaper "IPv6-only internet" options might emerge. Full disclosure: my day job is at cisco. And untangling the creative NAT configurations and bugs caused by them has paid my bills for the past 10 years. Everything posted here is my personal opinion and not of my employer.