[immibis]

For one, most major governments have told them to do it or else. I'm not sure which year it will be but there's already a mandate that US federal client systems can't have IPv4, and contractors must support IPv6, and a later deadline is for servers and websites to not have IPv4, at which point if your ISP doesn't provide access to federal government websites then all your customers can sue you into oblivion for failure to provide contracted services, including damages for any missed federal government interactions, which your liability waiver will not limit since your lack of IPv6 support by that time is intentional gross negligence. Google and Apple both require apps to work on IPv6-only networks or they get removed from app stores, and the majority of mobile networks are IPv6-native (with a slow translation layer for IPv4). Over 50% of internet traffic is IPv6 right now.

I'm not sure why you guys keep saying IPv6 won't happen, when it's already happened. Just ostriching, or incentivized to keep IPv4 address prices high, or what gives?

[unethical_ban]

Accusation of malice is a little far, I think the ipv6 transition isn't obvious to people because it has mostly been on mobile networks and the big datacenters. There are a lot of large organizations yet to implement it internally.

[apitman]

I wish I had an IPv4 block to hoard.

Far more important than current adoption is rate of adoption, which is slowing.

US mandates will certainly help and may be enough, but the US can't force other countries to follow. Many countries have far lower adoption rates.

[immibis]

Major internet centers are US (V6 mandate), Europe (V6 mandate, I think - and if not already, they will), China (V6 mandate) and to a lesser extent the west Pacific rim (Japan, Korea, Singapore, Australia). Other countries will do whatever they have to do to remain connected to these, unless they want to make their own isolated BR(not I)(not C)S internet with blackjack and hookers.

[apitman]

I hope you're right

[immibis]

What else do you foresee? A country like Chile just decides it doesn't want to be in the global internet and more, and separates? No, I think that's completely unrealistic.

If it can't upgrade in time, it might remain connected using some kind of translator or proxy. Even if not official, someone would surely run one - it's too useful and we're not talking about a censorship scenario where it would be illegal. Experience shows this is very annoying and will quickly be upgraded to native level. Note that tunneling is native.

Most end-user ISPs today use some kind of tunneling to separate the architecture of their network from the architecture of the services they deliver to customers. If you use DSL, your connection is (usually) a PPPoAoE tunnel with one endpoint at your house and another endpoint at one of your ISP's POPs - the entire access network feels transparent to you. If you use a cellular network, it does something similar with GTP.

And considering that fact, it's not as hard to upgrade a network to IPv6 as you might think. Some core routers and edge routers must be upgraded, but the majority of the network is tunneled over. Perhaps during a transitionary period, your CPE (home router) will encapsulate your IPv6 packets in IPv4. This doesn't require a new router because most of them do routing in software and can just get a firmware update.