> I think the answer is in the fact that we've built so many workarounds that it stretched IPv4 well beyond its end-of-life.
Well, that is true in a way (I mean, without NAT (or something similar), there obviously would not be any way to keep going, so, yeah, in that sense, NAT has made things somewhat bearable instead of completely unworkable, thus making the migration to v6 less urgent).
But my point is that the reason why people (companies in particular) aren't migrating to a large extent seems to me to not be because it wouldn't be worth it for them, but rather that they lack the understanding to see that it would be. There are lots and lots of admins out there who operate IP networks and essentially have no clue of IP routing. They have grown up in a world of NAT, and just understand "the router" as "the public internet termination point" or whatever you want to call it. They don't even see NAT as a workaround, but as the obvious and natural state of affairs, because, what are you gonna do if you want to connect more than one machine to your internet connection? You need a router! And router is synonymous with NAT gateway, because that's why you need the router ... or something.
If your whole mindset doesn't even allow you to see the possibility of the natural state of the internet (i.e. end-to-end addressability of all participants), you won't ever notice all the workarounds that you are using. And if, say, port forwarding doesn't occur to you as being a workaround, but rather the obvious thing you just need to do to make some internal machine reachable from the outside, then you also never get the idea that IPv6 might be the solution. You just assume that IPv6 obviously also has to have port forwarding, because you still want to make internal machines reachable from the outside, don't you?
Well, that is true in a way (I mean, without NAT (or something similar), there obviously would not be any way to keep going, so, yeah, in that sense, NAT has made things somewhat bearable instead of completely unworkable, thus making the migration to v6 less urgent).
But my point is that the reason why people (companies in particular) aren't migrating to a large extent seems to me to not be because it wouldn't be worth it for them, but rather that they lack the understanding to see that it would be. There are lots and lots of admins out there who operate IP networks and essentially have no clue of IP routing. They have grown up in a world of NAT, and just understand "the router" as "the public internet termination point" or whatever you want to call it. They don't even see NAT as a workaround, but as the obvious and natural state of affairs, because, what are you gonna do if you want to connect more than one machine to your internet connection? You need a router! And router is synonymous with NAT gateway, because that's why you need the router ... or something.
If your whole mindset doesn't even allow you to see the possibility of the natural state of the internet (i.e. end-to-end addressability of all participants), you won't ever notice all the workarounds that you are using. And if, say, port forwarding doesn't occur to you as being a workaround, but rather the obvious thing you just need to do to make some internal machine reachable from the outside, then you also never get the idea that IPv6 might be the solution. You just assume that IPv6 obviously also has to have port forwarding, because you still want to make internal machines reachable from the outside, don't you?