To me, there's an implication here that we're talking about a transition from IPv4 to IPv6, which (again, to me) implies that there's a vision of IPv6 being the overwhelmingly dominant protocol on the Internet with IPv4 marginalised (e.g.) like DECNET and IPX in 2009.
Does anybody here expect this to happen in their lifetimes?
Yes. I used to think that this would take 10 years, but now I believe that it could happen faster because the transition from IPv4 to IPv6 is so much easier than IPX or DECNET to IP.
Or do people imagine that IPv4 is so entrenched that it will never really go away, regardless of the growth in IPv6 deployment?
I also believe this although it doesn't matter for the Internet anymore than all those devices currently working through I2C or RS232 to Ethernet proxies.
Just curious, really. There's a slight operational base for the question, which is that a transition implies IPv6-only nodes, whereas an entrenched IPv4 Internet means we'll be dual-stack for ever.
In a datacenter I expect that folks are already deploying IPv6-only servers. But then datacenters already hide behind a forest of load-balancers, caching proxies and so on. One size does not fit all. --Michael Dillon