Moving to IPv6: why migrate now and how to get started

The migration to IPv6 has been announced for twenty years, yet many infrastructures still run IPv4 only. The context has changed: IPv4 is exhausted, its price is climbing, and a growing share of global traffic is now natively IPv6. Postponing the migration is no longer neutral — it means accumulating technical debt and extra cost.

Why now?

• IPv4 scarcity is real: the RIRs no longer have blocks to hand out freely. Acquiring IPv4 addresses now happens on a secondary market, at high prices that will not fall.
• IPv6 is already dominant among many mobile and consumer ISPs: a significant share of your users may reach you better over IPv6.
• A vast address space: IPv6 ends the NAT workarounds and simplifies network architecture in the long run.

The right strategy: dual-stack

Migration does not (thankfully) mean switching everything over at once. The recommended approach is dual-stack: running IPv4 and IPv6 in parallel on the same equipment. Each service becomes reachable over both protocols, and clients use whichever they have. You migrate gradually, with no disruption to what already works.

The concrete steps

• Obtain an IPv6 prefix from your operator or your RIR (a /48 or /32 depending on your profile).
• Enable IPv6 on the network core and transit links, with dedicated IPv6 BGP sessions.
• Make your public services reachable over IPv6: DNS (AAAA records), reverse proxy, load balancers, firewall.
• Monitor and test: verify both stacks work, measure the traffic split, adjust filtering rules.

The operator's role

A good operator makes the task radically simpler: it provides native IPv6 connectivity, IPv4 and IPv6 BGP sessions, and support to size your addressing plan. That is what we offer with our IP transit, available in IPv4/IPv6 dual-stack, on a network we operate ourselves. If you prefer to delegate operations, our managed IT offering handles the design and follow-up.