If we're talking about advertisable blocks, the Germany scenario doesn't happen. For the time being, there can't be a liquid market for /32's, at least not one that works acros multiple ISPs.
I agree with you strongly that the 128 bit IP address is a huge design mistake, one that has unnecessarily retarded the deployment of IPv6 (I personally believe fatally so). Even in the '90s, a 64 bit number was still a scalar on most platforms you'd care about. And even in 2012, 128 bit numbers aren't. I think people drastically underestimate the amount of work it's going to take to upgrade the huge amount of software built on the assumption that you can store an IP address in a scalar.
> huge amount of software built on the assumption that you can store an IP address in a scalar
The truly huge universe of code is at the application level. Sane applications use strings for remote hosts, or work with URL's, and let library- or OS-level code deal with the details of turning that into an address.
OS'es -- even Windows -- have supported IPv6 for nearly a decade. Most networking libraries I've come across also have IPv6 support.
The main problem isn't software, it's configuration. Namely the configuration of the interface between the customer network and the ISP. The ISP doesn't want to turn on IPv6 because it might break some customers, and the customer can't test IPv6 functionality since their ISP doesn't support it.
These problems are compounded for residential ISP's, since most of their customers can't be bothered to learn anything technical.
That is nice to hear. My biggest problem with IPv6 has always been the size of the addresses, which I think is too big, but I always thought I was just being old-fashioned. It's interesting to see other people think the same, although probably for different or more justified reasons.
At the time it was really frustrating to hear people say "64 bits is just twice as big as it is now, that will never last" and I would say emphatically "No, that is FOUR BILLION times bigger!" and get hit with "Well what if every light switch in the world had its own IP address huh? huh?" and I would say "Yup, if that happened we MIGHT use up may 10 or 16 BILLIONTHS of the address space just for lights, the equivalent impact of dedicating a class B in the current address space to lights, which nobody would really think twice about."
I agree with you strongly that the 128 bit IP address is a huge design mistake, one that has unnecessarily retarded the deployment of IPv6 (I personally believe fatally so). Even in the '90s, a 64 bit number was still a scalar on most platforms you'd care about. And even in 2012, 128 bit numbers aren't. I think people drastically underestimate the amount of work it's going to take to upgrade the huge amount of software built on the assumption that you can store an IP address in a scalar.