bird - 3:16 pm on Jan 29, 2011 (gmt 0)

Nice panic... ;)

Nonetheless, there is really not that much to get excited about. Many people seem to think that IPv4 and IPv6 are mutually exclusive, but that isn't the case. Any client connected to his ISP via IPv6 can reach any IPv4 server (eg. web site) without a problem, because IPv4 is technically a subset of IPv6. There must just be one router along the way (eg. at the ISP) who does the address conversion.

It simply doesn't make sense to upgrade servers to IPv6, let alone to remove their IPv4 support, before *every* client on this planet has done so. The ones to start switching first will most likely be large consumer ISPs, and since they distribute their addresses via DHCP, most of their customers will never notice that anything has changed. Modern OSes, web browsers, and e-mail clients *do* support IPv6 just fine, even if they don't go and brag about it.