The last IPv4 addresses have been allocated by IANA. \u00a0 It seems unavoidable that soon, some new hosts are going to need to be IPv6 only.<\/p>\n
One set of stakeholders that have resisted IPv6 has been content providers. \u00a0 Content providers have been concerned that if they enable IPv6, users with older software will not be able to access their sites, or will have poor performance. \u00a0This has lead to a “not me first!” attitude — a classic suboptimal Nash equilibrium in which no single content provider has incentive to switch, since they may lose customers to other providers.<\/p>\n
An interesting experiment designed to break out of this suboptimal equilibrium is for all the parties to agree to a simultaneous switch of strategies. \u00a0 That has led to “World IPv6 Day” — June 8 — in which most of the largest content providers will simultaneously enable IPv6 for one day, and “see what happens.” \u00a0The idea is that maybe IPv6 won’t be as bad as some people think, and even if there are problems, we might learn some things to help us address them.<\/p>\n