What: Last week the Internet Assigned Numbers Authority, operated by the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers, handed out [pdf] the final pool of addresses available under Internet Protocol version 4, or IPv4 in a public ceremony. They were assigned to Regional Internet Registries, which are expected to distribute the remaining addresses.
What's Next: New addresses will be assigned under the next-generation Internet protocol, IPv6. This pool of Internet addresses is a trillion times larger than the total pool of IPv4 addresses, which numbers about 4.3 billion.
Who Will Be Impacted: For more consumers, there will be negligible impact. "The ISPs will be handling much of this,” said Leo Vegoda, a researcher with ICANN. (via TechNewsWorld). Some technology users may experience some glitches, such as people using VPN software to connect with their offices or users of point-to-point software such as Skype, he adds.
Richard Jimmerson, CIO at the the American Registry for Internet Numbers, told TechNewsWorld that video streaming, voice streaming and online gaming might also experience glitches, while "simple Web browsing and email are the applications that will be least impacted by this change."
Why Will There Be Glitches At All: Until everyone - from ISPS to device makers to content providers - shifts to the IPv6 standard there will be a transition period that could last up to ten years. This is what must happen, explains J.D. Falk, director of product strategy at Return Path, in a blog post. Services which rely on using multiple IP addresses to separate traffic will have to change their architecture, including many web hosting environments.
ESPs must also make the shift and they tend to assign one or more IPv4 addresses to each customer that they send for in order to ensure that each has a distinct IP reputation, and to participate in Return Path Certification, he continued. "But now, we’ve got domain reputation built on DKIM - you can have an effectively infinite number of different signing (d=) domains sent from a single IPv4 or IPv6 address. The big mailbox providers and MTA and filtering vendors have all been getting ready for this, but they can’t bring domain reputation to the forefront and deprioritize IPv4 reputation until the majority of legitimate, wanted mail is signed with DKIM.
"Similarly, Return Path can’t move our Certified program entirely to domains until both the senders and the receivers are ready for it - which is part of why we're now requiring DKIM even for IP-based Certification. So, in effect, the ESPs and other large-scale senders have to switch to domains first."
Then, customer premise equipment - the routers and modems that connect end user networks to their access provider - need to be updated to use IPv6 correctly, he said. It is only then, he concluded, that the industry can start talking about deprovisioning the IPv4 addresses in favor of moving everything to IPv6, rather than running both networks in parallel.
What Does It Mean for Online Marketers: Behavioral tracking tactics could be hampered, Vegoda suggested. "A company will not be able to track the habits of one computer any more. It may find itself following the online patterns of an entire neighborhood."
