The End is Nigh

We've known for a while that it's been coming. It's been predicted for a while, but ICANN and Google now reports that it's only weeks away from running out of IP address space in the IPv4 realm. Most companies and organizations have been dragging their heels in moving to IPv6, and the actual run-out of IPv4 addresses is only going to exacerbate the problem. Many may try to get around the problem by sharing addresses using more NAT devices, but even that can only go so far.

The biggest problem is going to be that many organizations can't move that quickly to IPv6 because many of their applications may still only run on IPv4 platforms. There is a solution, and we've talked about it in the past here on The Proxy Update. There is such thing as an IPv6 to IPv4 proxy, which manages to do seamless translation between the two technologies, allowing you to slowly migrate over to IPv6 as you upgrade each of your platforms to the new technology.

Blue Coat Systems was the leader in the space introducing their IPv6 proxy first. McAfee has since also reported that they have included an IPv6 to IPv4 bridge in the latest version of their software for their web gateway.

So there's really no excuse anymore. It's time to update your network, and you've got tools available to get you there.