Joaquim Menezes wrote a pretty interesting article about IPv6, in which he interviewed yours truly about the latest on this technology and when it would replace IPv4, which is version 4 of the Internet Protocol, currently used throughout most networks.  The article got printed in several sources, including ITBusiness.ca, CRM News, Linux News and e-commerce Times, among others.

Joaquim did a great job at explaining the issues in a very straightforward way... I highly recommend you read his article, but without delving too much into the nuts and bolts of the technology, I just wanted to highlight the following:

• the IPv4 address space probably won't be depleted until 2007-2010, given all the stop gap solutions employed (e.g. NAT, CIDR)
• NAT will still need to exist even after the advent of IPv6, since it will have to be used for all IPv4 to IPv6 translation points
• there will be 3 strategies used to migrate from IPv4 to IPv6: address translation (techniques to enable IPv4 devices to communicate with IPv6 gadgets), dual stack (allowing IPv4 and IPv6 to coexist on the same network), and tunelling (using to connect IPv6 islands

Obviously, the uptake will vary according to the market segment, with infrastructure vendors and SPs embracing IPv6 before consumers and the enteprirse.  Joaquim also captured well the three key catalysts for IPv6: security (harder for hackers to impersonate others), savings (a lot of extra manual configuration is no longer going to be required) and support for mobile computing (users will be able to achieve seamless roaming in a much simpler fashion, without the need of work-arounds).  And on that mobility promise lies the best prospect of growth for IPv6 in the enterprise and carrier space.  A lot of wireless operators are seeking bundling of IP data services and voice functionality - to create their own kind of super-bundle... and IPv6 can be instrumental in achieving that objective.