I was reading an article recently ((where “recently” is relative to when I started writing this, not when I actually published it…)) about the challenges in getting IPv6 up and running – before we finally run out of IPv4 addresses, and can’t plug anything else into the internet. One big change would be the end of address sharing – NAT – since there’ll be enough IPv6 addresses for every computer in your house to have a globally unique address. NAT is annoying, and in general we’ll be better off without it, but if every device is visible to the whole internet, there are some interesting implications which will only be advantages if we work out how to harness them. So here is my optimist’s guide to next year’s internet…

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