Are you ready for IPv6?
Like me, you may well have become complacent over the past couple of decades of hearing about how IPv4, the protocol that runs the Internet and almost every internal network of note at every business in the world, is going to be running out of addresses any day now. Without unique addresses, networked devices cannot, well, network, and all the gee whiz technology that keeps the CIO in business turns into paperweights.
Combinations of judicious address redistribution and various NAT schemes have been putting off the inevitable, but the IETF has been working on the replacement for IPv4, IPv6, for almost two decades now, and there is pretty much zero chance that it won't be widely adopted at some point in the near future. Already, most devices support the protocol (with varying degrees of success). Eventually, we'll be going cold turkey and using it exclusively for networking needs.
But the cure may be worse than the disease, according to Ars Technica, which dissects here some of the many obstacles that proper implementation faces, and notes that there isn't really another alternative readily available… although I manage most of us will keep muddling along with v4 for quite some time without ever really noticing our status as second class citizens.