IPV6 - needed to avoid Network Meltdown

• IPV4 has 4.3 billion addresses - however, not all IP devices are always on and so address swapping can occur (often down via the DHCP process)
  
  
• Computers become more affordable and then gadgets start to develop. Today the typical person may have any number of internet devices (including your car now) accessing the network at any one time.

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• The official agenecies for assigning address space (the IANA and the RIR - google them) ran out of spaces to assign on April 15, 2011. This date marked the point where not everyone who needed an IPv4 address could be freely allocated one.
  
  The remaining IPv4 space will now be dealt with on a contintent or country basis.
  
  The American Registry for Internet Numbers formed to service America and to develop new policies for resuing, reclaiming and allocation new remaining IPV4 space. ARIN's pool of IPV4 space ,however, was depleted as of Sept. 24, 2015.
  
  IPV6 now exists but many organizations are not switching fast enough, confident that IPV4 space will still exist. Currently most any machine has both and IPV4 and IPV6 address. This issue is effectively described here and outlines a plan for how organizations can now purchase IPV4 space.
  
  All organizations, especially Universities, should be moving to IPV6 space now. The University of Pennsylvania is way ahead of everyone else.
  
  There are several important advantages to utilizing an IPV6 network.
  
  
  • IPV6 includes security in the underlying protocol.
    
    
  • To implement better support for real-time traffic (such as videoconference), IPv6 includes a flow label mechanism so routers can more easily recognize where to send information. This is quite important
    
    
  • IPv6 takes the best of what made IPv4 successful and gets rid of minor flaws and unused features. It is much more efficient.