Under the slogan "this time it is for real",
IPv6 was officially launched on 06.06.2012. What will follow in the next couple of years, namely the way in which the world's major ISPs will deploy IPv6 on terrestrial and mobile networks to the end customer, will determine the future fate of the internet: to P2P or not to P2P.
At this point in time there are some encouraging signs in that ISPs engaged in the IPv6 transition seem to follow the new standard's guideline of providing /64 (or better) prefixes to the landline users and (at least) a proper /128 address to mobile devices, but nothing can be thought of as cast in iron at this early stage of deployment; only time will tell.
One
very encouraging thing is that the
IETF seems to manage to control the open-standards game, and the "
IPv6 ready" logo is an
extraordinarily powerful tool for steering CPE manufacturers to play the game properly (i.e. plain simple prefix delegation, without one-to-many NAT66 improvisations on their devices).
Maybe there still is hope.
