Recently, we heard that we needed to change to IPv6 quick and that the variety of IP addresses utilizing the current IPv4 protocol would shortly come to an end. Then, abruptly, talk about IPv6 appeared to die down. Did the demand for it vanish?

The response to these two questions, finally, is “no” as well as the pending need to upgrade our networks to manage IPv6 is rapidly approaching. With some three trillion apparatus called to be on the Web by 2020 (just four years away)–the countdown clock to IPv6 is simply ticking louder and louder.

A vital point Williams stressed about IPv6 is that it’s not backward compatible with IPv4. And for a connection to work entirely on IPv6, all the apparatus in the path between your source and destination must be IPv6, or you’ll find yourself drilling down to IPv4 for part of the course.

Williams stressed that the requirement for business to embrace IPv6 will be increasingly significant as the Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT) becomes more common. The rationale? Because IIoT will be comprised of detectors which are Ethernet. We have already seen this move in the industrial control system space with controls and drives, and we are increasingly seeing it take place with industrial detectors also (see “Accommodating Detectors for Industrial Ethernet”).

“This means a great deal of IP addresses will be desired and IPv4 only will not cut it,” said Williams. “So if you’re the administrator of an industrial network, you need to begin looking at becoming an IPv6 network as soon as possible, both wired and wireless.”

I asked Williams about Network Address Translation (NAT), a communication system made to permit devices on a personal network to access the Web through just one public IP address. Patrons of NAT say it removes the requirement for large quantities of public IP addresses via IPv6 by confusing details of the network behind an individual address, while also raising security.

Williams said he believes NAT has helped delay the need to deploy IPv6 in the near term; yet, it “has not removed the demand for IPv6.”

Both IPv6 apparatus and double IP apparatus (IPv4 and IPv6 able) are available now from a lot of the more significant network appliance makers.

The weak spot for NAT, based on Williams, is that if you only have restricted outside IP addresses, where everything is “NAT’ed through them, you restrict the amount of services you’ll be able to provide externally. VOIP, for instance, has problems with NAT’ed surroundings.”

In the switchover procedure, Williams sees a purpose for his Statseeker merchandise as a provider of network management applications. “Whether your network is IPv4, IPv6, or a hybrid of both IP addressing systems, you’ll require a strong, scalable network info supervisor,” he said. Beyond supplying visibility to the apparatus and node degree in a network, Statseeker also records and stores information in an identical granularity, i.e., near real time, in which it initially was recorded. This capacity means there’s “no loss of granularity in weekly or monthly rollups, which don’t permit you to actually see what’s going on,” he said.