5 ways your ISP’s failure to move to IPv6 could affect you

June 6, 2012 is World IPv6 Launch Day, a time when ISPs, major websites and network engineers will permanently flip the switch over a different form of addressing system.

For the most part, the IPv6 transition will go unnoticed and few will care about what is an arcane and important element of Internet architecture. But here’s where things may go wrong as IPv4 lingers. At its heart the IPv6 addressing issue is exactly that… a big change to a new type of address. Every device that is hooked up to a network, be it your iPad or a Facebook server, has an IP address so routers know where to send the packets that make up your Facebook profile or your Netflix stream. Sadly, back in 1980s when the lords of the net were thinking up an address scheme, they used IPv4, which only allows for a 32-bit address and about 4.2 billion total IP addresses.

Here’s how the delay in shifting to IPv6 and the reliance on a workaround could affect you:

1. Trouble with iTunes or Google Maps: Certain apps such as Google Maps or iTunes use more than one port to communicate back to the service and because users would be sharing one or just a few IP addresses, those ports may not be available.
2. Security: When users share one IP address, the ISP generally creates an abstraction layer to determine where the packets need to go to in the home. But this abstraction layer becomes a security risk. By attacking one IP address, a hacker could take down or infect all Internet-connected devices in a home. It becomes a single point of failure.
3. Court orders and DMCA takedowns: Shared IP addresses can make it hard for an ISP to determine who is actually downloading copyright materials. This actually may not upset end users or the ISPs as long as no one gets dragged into court as part of a hunt for settlement dollars.
4. Pixellated YouTube videos: The workarounds associated with either sharing a single IP address among a block of users or even a block of homes is just one option. Another is running both networks simultaneously and translating traffic between them. This adds some computational overhead and latency that in CableLab tests caused there to be delays in streaming and receiving HTTP video packets.
5. Stories about IPv6: As long as networks linger in the land of IPv4 every June, it’s possible you will have to see headlines talking about the need to get everyone to transition to IPv6. Hopefully, ISPs and major web sites are getting on the ball.