What killed IPv6 as a mainstream protocol?

jscho · September 4, 2015

You'd be surprised how much IPv6 is being used already. Most modern home routers are using IPv6 addressing alongside IPv4 (I know my ISP's routers are compatible)

Major companies like Google (and I think Facebook?) are trying to push IPv6 a bit more.

toxicnos · September 4, 2015

It was never mainstream. The reason it has not been adopted is because companys will have to invest large amounts of money on upgrading old legacy gear to more modern ones and the people who don't for can't upgrade will not be able to connect to the internet. Everything nowadays supports IPV6 so it will be the new standard sooner or later as we are almost out if IPv4 addresses.

Donut417 · September 4, 2015

Most ISP's are probably not wanting to spend the money. As much as I hate and despise Comcast I do respect the fact they are trying to get IPv6 going. However you do need to look at this in a business perspective. ISP's will have to buy new equipment and such. So not dead but its going to be a long and painfully process.

brwainer · September 5, 2015

Speaking as an employee of an ISP (a small one that has pretty good customer satisfaction) the biggest issue for us isn't hardware support but a combination of it being harder to control (the auto configuration no-DHCP option is annoying actually) and the laziness of having to deal with super duper long addresses. An IPv4 address is short enough that a human can really grok the network, subnet, and host.