TABLE OF CONTENTS Part I introduces the challenges facing IPv4 and the forces at work in the development of a successor protocol. The reader should understand the following topics after reading Chapters 1 through 5.
How new technologies can overshadow strongly entrenched existing technologies without ever seeming to present any direct competition.
The problems inherent in IPv4 and why they herald an end to Internet growth.
The mechanisms already designed and deployed to extend IPv4 s useful life, and the problems those mechanisms have introduced.
The steps taken in the development of IPv6.
This chapter discusses one of the greatest challenges facing IPv6: market acceptance. That this problem is economic rather than technical may be surprising, but as technologies and the markets for them mature, those markets start to behave just like any other commodity market. As founders of so many Internet companies discovered in the first year or so of this decade, it is just not possible to build a sustainable business unless the business generates more in revenue than it costs to run.
At the same time, every once in a while the big companies manage to miss out on a key new technology because it doesn t fit into any existing market. IPv6 may be an example of just such a disruptive technology in large part...
