The Internet Assigned Numbers Authority (IANA) has delegated the initial IPv6 address spaces to regional internet registries (RIRs). Now RIRs can begin immediate worldwide deployment of IPv6. It is necessary to replace the current version of Internet Protocol (IP), version 4, because IPv4’s 32-bit address space is running out. IPv6 has 128-bit addresses, which vastly increases the available address space. This will be especially important as new kinds of devices, from televisions to toasters, are brought onto the internet. It’s been suggested that every traffic light in the world get an IP address, IANA’s Josh Elliott told Wired, IPv6 could handle that.
IANA has decided that IPv6 addresses will be distributed in a hierarchical manner, the same way IPv4 address spaces are assigned today. The RIRs – the American Registry for Internet Numbers (ARIN), the Asia Pacific Network Information Center (APNIC) and the Reseaux IP Europeens (RIPE) – will allocate top- level aggregation identifiers to service providers. The service providers in their turn will assign address to other ISPs and to end users. Though IPv6 has been given the green light, questions about how it will interoperate with the internet’s Domain Name System (DNS) have yet to be resolved. These issues are expected to be dealt with and added to procedure guidelines over the next few months.
