No new IP adresses by next year?

Unfortunately IPv6 was built without proper backwards compatibility. They should have simply made it so that every IPv4 address automatically was an IPv6 address, and set up IPv6 -> IPv4 NAT so that entire IPv6 networks could easily hide behind a single IPv4 address. But neither was initially done.

Without these two obvious measures, nobody wants an IPv6 address because it is useless to have one. I have no idea why this wasn't obvious to the IETF, but apparently they missed it.

At least they now admit that this was a mistake: http://www.networkworld.com/news/2009/032509-ipv6-mistake.ht...

Oh and the whole "no NAT" thing? I'm not looking forward to that at all. You see the top reason for using NAT in homes is so that your internet provider can't charge you for putting multiple lightly used computers on your connection. And they aren't trying to charge you because they are running out of IP addresses, they are doing it because it is a way to identify high-end customers who can be charged more. And IPv6 will close a big loophole for them.