We should care about v6. iPv4 shortages are a reality. ISPs, cloud vendors, enterprises are all struggling to get IPv4 allocations, they are expensive (only getting more-so) and obtaining resources is incredibly complicated. And we're getting less and less. Enterprises are lucky to get a /24. ISPs, irrespective of their size, are lucky to get a /22 (1024 addresses) per allocation.Don't really care about IPV6.... long ago they said IPv4 will run out of IP addresses, but perhaps Port Forwarding / NAT saved the IPv4 and it might still be around for quite a while.
From what I know Before NAT each device connected to the internet had basically a "public" IP address then, which meant IPv4 was running out fast, fastforward a couple years, most devices now are likely to be behind a router/gateway, which freed up all the device public IP addresses and basically only the router / gateways are actually having the real public IP, so ja might be a while still before we see IPv6 in full action![]()
1) The largest IP holder in the world, AWS, and now a few other cloud vendors, started charging for IPs last year - this is the way the entire industry is going to move as the resource becomes more scarce, which means everyone pays.
2) NAT really sucks. Just because something works so-so, doesn't mean we should tolerate it. Spend enough time dealing with random gaming issues, VoIP, CCTV and other real time applications that suffer from complicated NAT tables and inconsistent NAT processing (port to port mapping) and v6 is a no-brainer.
3) IPv6 is more secure. NAT is not security (see above). Firewalls have cleaner connection tables to manage. DPI and Threat management works better.
4) At scale (carrier), NAT (CGNAT) is hard, pricey and adds unnecessary complexity.
