IPv6 is the next step in the Internet. At least that’s what was promised over a decade ago when IPv6 was first announced. The problem was the the four billion or so addresses allowed in IPv4 (that’s what you’re using right now) weren’t enough to accommodate everybody. The world was going to run out of IP addresses. And soon. That’s why most home networks use routers; routers allow multiple computers to use a single IP address with the added benefit of making the computers behind the router inaccessible from the public internet. But even with routers and NAT and all the kludges designed to extend IPv4, that’s all they do: extend. We’re slowly and surely running out of IP addresses and that’s why IPv6 was designed.

Now there are lots of valid reasons why IPv6 should be adopted and many other reasons why it hasn’t yet been adopted. There are more knowledgeable people to explain all the intricate awesomeness in IPv6. What I really care about is a quote I read in an ars technica article on the subject regarding the sheer size of the IPv6 address space:

The total number of possible addresses that this gives us [is] 340,282,366,920,938,463,463,374,607,431,768,211,456. To put this into perspective: there are currently 130 million people born each year. If this number of births remains the same until the sun goes dark in 5 billion years, and all of these people live to be 72 years old, they can all have 53 times the address space of the IPv4 Internet [4,294,967,296 addresses] for every second of their lives.

If that doesn’t get you excited about IPv6… well you’re not a geek like me.