jimbob0i0: What's happening initially is Carrier Grade NAT (CGN) to extend their IPv4 allocations.... this has an unfortunate side effect that it breaks the ability to contact anyone directly who is behind one of these....
The 'Internet' *has* run out of IPv4 addresses at this point - it actually ran out at the start of the year when IANA assigned their last remaining networks to the regional registries .... the European registry (RIPE) is estimated to run out Aug/Sep at thi spoint I believe....
The problem internally in the major ISPs is the cost to implement for the large part... there is a substantial investment needed to get consumers on IPv6 for them. Right now the vast majority (I'd go so far to say all in fact) of content their customers are interested in is over IPv4 - and the vast majority of this is accessible with CGN too.
CGN is a lot cheaper for the ISPs to implement than IPv6.
Thus we reach the impasse - the cost-benefit analysis undertaken by the businesses give a better short term gain of IPv4 CGN than IPv6 deployment .... IPv6 will have to be on the roadmaps but these would be long term ones a year or more in the future.
It is unfortunate but that is the reality....
However with content starting to become available over IPv6 the 'there is no content anyway' argument goes.... what we really need now is some content provider to give a major feature gain by having an IPv6 connection (SIP/VOIP or video streaming direct from one home to another... reaching your devices at home without port forwarding being needed etc etc) that provides a market advantage to them which can then properly get the ball rolling...
Once it becomes a competitive featureset to advertise (think an advert "you get the next-generation of internet with us") then the CBA swings the other way else you face the risk of losing market position... and then investment could happen to a larger extent than is current.
Well, I don't have a fixed IP at home, but I can tell you that so far, the most meaningful impact of my provider's strategy is that I can't really host a permanent web service directly from my home computer (which is probably a thrilling restriction for my ISP, I'm sure they had home use only in mind when they designed the plan).
Otherwise, my IP is semi-permanent (as long as I don't turn off the internet router for more than a few minutes, I keep my external IP and at very least, I have a range of external ports allocated to me at any given time, cause I can listen to incoming connections with various applications that listen on different ports).
So unfortunately, I don't foresee regular customers feeling the impact for some time assuming that their ISP works in a similar way.
Those most likely to feel it are a fringe minority who want permanent services on the internet from their home and they have access to external hosting plans for that (which are pricier, but get the job done).
However, I agree with you that IPv6 is just the solution that makes sense and we'll have to do the switch eventually so might as well bite the bullet and do it.
Unfortunately, in my case, I just noticed that the company that provides my VPS hosting plan did not provide me with an IPv6 address, only an IPv4 address. I'm sure many others are in a similar situation. Not that it matters in my case as the web service I provide is more of an experiment to get my hands dirty with some of the technologies and is currently limited to very small number of users, but still: my situation probably applies to some more substantial internet applications providers (especially those that apply to web browsers were persistent connections are a fledgling part of the HTML5 standard and they have to do without anyways).
As long as the hosting plans don't have a stake in the game, the hands of many applications providers are tied.
