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When Joe first asked me to write a foreword for this latest edition of Understanding
IPv6, I looked to forewords from previous editions as well as other networking
books, hoping to draw some inspiration. As will become increasingly obvious, my writing
skills are not as honed as Joe’s.
Looking back was actually incredibly useful to me, because it clearly accentuated
what has changed in the last few years. Microsoft has supported IPv6—the next generation
of the Internet Protocol—since its inception. We built support into the Windows
stack, rearchitected our platform to enable developers to take advantage of IPv6, and
over the past 10 years have been extending support across the company.
The Internet Protocol is the routing and transit protocol for the Internet, the largest
and most important assembly of computing infrastructure of our time. IPv6 is going to
make the Internet better, by allowing direct connectivity between host, whether they
be family members video chatting or business information zooming between data
centers.
We frequently take the time to remind everyone of our commitment to the realization
of the end-benefits of IPv6. We do this for multiple reasons. We take pride in our
work, certainly, and it gives us great pleasure to do our part to make technology a
bit better. But perhaps more important, these reminders are evangelical; they assure
customers, partners, and readers that IPv6 is something worthy of attention, worthy of
adoption.
For many years, this was a difficult task. People didn’t want IPv6. The growth and
maturation of IPv4 survival strategies, such as large-scale network address translation,
threatened the inevitability of IPv6 adoption. That’s the truth. Some in the networking
world might try to revise the past 10 years: the broken routing equipment, the
inadequate software, the legends of danger, IPv6 performance problems, IPv6 security
problems, IPv6 money issues, and IPv6 zombies.
That darkness was real, but that darkness has past. In the past 24 months, we’ve
made immense progress toward the goal of upgrading the Internet. IPv6 is no longer
the next-generation Internet Protocol; it has become the now-generation Internet
Protocol.
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