Last Wednesday (the 9th of April, 2008), I skipped the last day of ARIN XXI to attend the Rocky Mountain IPv6 Summit. The summit was held at DU and was put on by the Rocky Mountain IPv6 Task Force (RMv6TF). RMv6TF is a regional sub-chapter of the North American IPv6 Task Force (NAv6TF) which in turn is a chapter of the IPv6 Forum. They all share in the goal of promoting and advancing IPv6, which was the goal of this summit as well.  Providing knowledge as a form of motivation for the audience to look seriously at IPv6 implementation and propagation.

As I have stated before; this is a crucial issue for anyone interested, influenced or intertwined with the Internet in any way.  The IANA IPv4 free pool (the global IP reserve, if you will) will be empty in less than five years (most estimates come in between 2 and 3) making IPv6 a necessity and not an option.  The faster that everyone realizes and accepts this, the easier and more fruitful everyones implementations will be.

I was very impressed with the Summit and am quite glad that I attended. RMv6TF has now made all of the presentations available on their website. I found every topic and presenter quite engaging and informative. Of course, I am already aware of and excited about the impending IPv6 propagation, making me a somewhat biased observer.

I was particularly impressed with John Curran’s presentation. John was speaking in his capacity as Chairman of ARIN’s Board of Trustees, he is also the CTO and COO for ServerVault. I found his passion and determination on the subject contagious and his speech enlightening. The specific points he put forth in each of the four industry targeted calls to action were particularly poignant and timely. Hopefully we all take heed.

Two other slide decks to look at (if you don’t read through them all) are Tony Hain’s keynote; IPv6 Acceptance: The Stages of Grief and Chuck Sellers’ Introduction to Mobile IPv6. Tony’s presentation contains some key information on the current state of IPv4 as well as the necessity and benefits of IPv6. This includes charts, graphs, bullets and graphical demonstrations (including a picture of Tony’s IPv6 optimized greenhouse). A great read for anyone delving into IPv6, just skip the last few Cisco marketing slides – as Tony did when giving the speech. The mobile IPv6 presentation that Chuck gave was a great primer on an oft-touted piece of IPv6 that I had little previous knowledge of. The slide deck contains much of the information he imparted to the audience and is another great read imo (the last slide contains an IPv6 Internet Topology Map produced by CAIDA, who are doing some very cool work).

I congratulate Scott Hogg and the entire RMv6TF on a great summit, especially considering it was their first!