Seriously, my knowledge ends with:
- It offers a shitload of IP addresses
- They look really complicated
- Something about every device in your local network being visible from everywhere?
- Some claim it obsoletes NAT?
I get that it’s probably too complicated a subject for an ELI5, so if there are good videos or resources explaining it in less than half an hour, feel free to share.
I guess the thing I mostly don’t get is:
If it’s just an extension of the address space, then why is it still such a big deal?
Why didn’t they add some sort of ipv4 compatibility layer into the new protocol and flip the switch everywhere 15 years ago?
Specifically answering this question. It works transparently with IPv4. Organisations running servers can run both IPv4 and IPv6 operations with very little effort on their part. ISPs can deploy this and router makers include support with only a reasonable amount of effort.
As users AND servers get IPv6 addresses, in the background they will just be used. At some point there would be so much IPv6 adoption they could turn off IPv4. There is a thing called “6to4” but dual stack has (I think rightly) became the main way people run both.
In the UK I think at least half the ISPs provide IPv6 now. I think also in Europe it’s the same or better. But still we’re far from replacing IPv4 and I wonder when it might ever happen.
Last time I checked the cloud flare radar about a month ago, it seems like about 38% of cloud flare traffic was occurring over IPv6 and Google commonly shows about 50% of their traffic over IPv6. So it is definitely growing, which is a good thing.