I worked with one of the inventors of IPv6 for a bit of time, and I think knowing Carl really gave me an insight into who IPv6 was invented for, and that's the big, big, big networks — peering groups that connect large swaths of the Internet with other nations' municipal or public infrastructure.

These groups are pushing petabytes of data every hour, and as a result, I think it makes their strategists think VERY big picture. From what I've seen, IPv6 addresses very real logistical problems you only see with IPv4 when you're already dealing with it on a galactic scale. So, I personally have no doubt that IPv6 is necessary and that the theory is sound.

However, this fuckin' half-in/half-out state has become the engine of a manifold of security issues, primarily bc nobody but nerds or industry specialists knows that much about it yet. That has led to rushed, busy, or just plain lazy devs and engineers to either keep IPv6 sockets listening, unguarded, or to just block them outright and redirect traffic to IPv4 anyway.

Imo there's not much to be done besides go forward with IPv6. It's there, it's tested, it's basically ready for primetime in terms of NIC chip support... I just wish it weren't so obtuse to learn. :/

There is something there, but mostly I think existing net admins try to map their existing IPv4 knowledge onto IPv6. That doesn't work very well. It needs to be treated as its own thing.