IPv6 was created some time ago, in particular due to an increasing problem in shortage of unique IPv4 addresses in the long term. However, it has not yet fully reached the masses, as the problem was mitigated by network address translation (NAT), which temporarily compensated for the lack of IP addresses.
In recent years, the world’s leading economies, such as the United States, China, and India, have committed to deploying IPv6-only IT solutions as quickly as possible. The European Union has also begun to draw increasing attention to the need to implement IPv6.
It is already playing a major role in serving the equipment on the market, so at some point, you may find yourself in a situation where the technologies in development (as well as those already developed) may no longer support IPv4. For example, a standard called Matter, developed for IoT (Internet of Things) solutions, is based on IPv6. IoT devices using the Matter standard are already on sale in Estonia. The demand for unique IP addresses is driven by the increasing popularity of smart homes and cloud-based solutions, as well as the introduction of 5G and Wi-Fi 6, which will enable businesses to use more and more devices (e.g. industrial automation equipment), all of which need IP addresses.
Security is an equally important consideration. Attackers find it significantly more inconvenient to scan IPv6 addresses compared to IPv4 addresses, simply because there are many more unique IP addresses in IPv6. With IPv6, each service can be assigned a unique and public IP address, and firewall rules can be associated with this address that are exactly right for the service. DDoS attack prevention is also more accurate, as the standard requires the use of a unique IP address for each device (both virtual and physical) that carries out the attack.
The Information System Authority recommends the implementation of IPv6 for all publicly available services today, as soon as possible.
You can read more about the arguments related to the transition and the practical steps involved below the article (in Estonian).
