
Every web site in the world has an IP address, which is obvious to anyone who has worked in any IT capacity. Right now everything (with little exception) uses the Internet Protocol version 4 (IPv4) as I'm sure you know. This provides nearly 18 million network addresses, and many more are needed. For anyone who doesn't know, your domain name (www.downloadsquad.com) is actually an alias pointing at an actual Internet address (IP) that looks more like 255.255.255.255, that is, under IP version 4. The 32-bit addresses we know today will go away eventually, and v4 will give way to
IPv6, which uses 128-bit addresses which is a few more addresses. My personal feeling is that the world will be more complicated mostly for network administrators, and not much harder for power users. When IPv6 hits us in the coming years, the world of networking will be much different. How will this affect your job, your play, your photo collection? Do you think it will have a big impact or just another phase of the Internet's evolution? So what do you think? Is IPv6 worth it, what have you heard about it, and do you think the whole idea will help or hurt the Internet in general?