Bill Cunningham wrote:
I've been hearing now for 2 years about the 128 bit IP addressing system and
how important it is. Why are we still using 32
bit IP addresses if we need the 128 bit ones?
And if we do finally go this route, will the 128 bit IP addresses simply
absorb the 32 bit addresses?
It's hard to know where to start. Probably http://www.ipv6forum.com is the best
place;
look for the various presentations or white papers. Or to toot my own trumpet,
see http://www.isoc.org/briefings/001/ . Also see
http://www.isoc.org/briefings/004/index.html
on deployment issues.
We are still using IPv4 with 32 bit addresses because upgrading to a new
version of
IP is a very hard thing to do and is bound to take years; some say it's
impossible.
IPv6 has its own addressing scheme. There are some transition mechanisms
allowing
IPv4 addresses to be used within IPv6 addresses, but that is only part of the
story.
In general, sites will simply get a new (bigger) range of addresses.
Brian