Strange time to give up on IPv6. Global availability is ~36% now and many countries it crossed 50% in 2021. If anything its time to ditch IPv4 once and for all.
And yet we are probably multiple decades away from 90% adoption and it is quite possible given the level of coordination required that we may never get to 100% adoption. We are more than 20 years in and I am still required to support ipv4 if I want to reach the market reliably while ipv6 has little incentive for me to support other than a general sense of goodwill/responsibility and the vague hope that someday it will result in an even larger network.
We need an expanded address space. The ipv6 rollout is proving to be one of the least effective ways to get it in practical terms.
I think The Marketâ„¢ will decide that trying to run IPv4 in a lot of places will be too expensive, and that end-points will get assigned IPv6 with various translation mechanisms being run for the 'legacy' Internet.
Heck, even AWS if finally allowing IPv6-only infrastructure:
>
And yet we are probably multiple decades away from 90% adoption and it is quite possible given the level of coordination required that we may never get to 100% adoption.
100% adaption will never come. Just look how many companies still use COBOL software that was developed in the 70s.
The question rather is: when will IPv4 become insignificant enough that your company won't have to care about it anymore?
I see a linear trend that, once adoption started in earnest around 2015 has seen about 30% of users being converted to iPv6. At some point, it’ll be more common to run into issues with v4, which will drive more adoption. The toolchain now needs. To support v6 and defaults using it will become more common. The conversion will limit the scarcity of v4 to some extend, but continued growth of internet access and connected devices adds pressure on the other side.
We need an expanded address space. The ipv6 rollout is proving to be one of the least effective ways to get it in practical terms.