The IPv6 address was designed to remove the threat of address exhaustion for the foreseeable future. Based on a 128-bit numbering scheme, the IPv6 protocol provides approximately 2^96 times more unique addresses than the current 32-bit IPv4 system. This works out to approximately 340 trillion trillion trillion total unique addresses. To put this into perspective, if all IPv4 addresses were compacted to fit inside a golf ball, all IPv6 addresses at the same density would fill a sphere the size of our sun. See the diagram above for a visual representation on just how many more addresses are available in IPv6 than IPv4.
Like it or not, if you have not yet started planning for IPv6, it is time to begin. IPv6 brings a lot of changes to network infrastructure and it is up to you to ensure that in the future your customers have connectivity. The switch to IPv6 is not going to happen overnight but it is time to start thinking about and beginning the transition process.
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