For my study I did, together with a few classmates, a research assignment on the exhaustion of IPv4. The results where published in a rapport which can be downloaded from the Dutch IPv6 task force; here or just from this site: Rapportage-onderzoek-IPv6. Since the rapport is in Dutch I will post an English summary later.
Excerpt:
Death of the Internet due to exhaustion of IPv4 address space has been proclaimed many times during the last decade. To date this Internet’s Doomsday has failed to arrive, however. Addressing authorities (RIPE, ARIN) are expressing an urgency that is more explicit than ever before. Also, with the standard availability of IPv6 on many client platforms (e.g. Linux, Windows and MacOS X), many major elements in the Internet infrastructure are now capable of running in a native or dual stack IPv6 environment. Many, particularly smaller, internet companies (e.g. hosting service providers) have not yet taken steps to migrate their environments to IPv6. The assignment for this research topic is to investigate support of IPv6 in hosting environments in the Netherlands. Compare the different results with respect to several aspects, including but not limited to: company size, annual revenue, number of employees, platform offerings, etc. For the category that does not (yet) support IPv6, investigate the reasons for this and develop an IPv6 implementation plan for the ‘typical’ company that fits this profile.
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