You may not need IPv6 right now, but you will soon. Fortunately, Windows 7 supports the advanced networking protocol better than any other Windows version. But that doesn’t mean you should rely on the default IPv6 configuration.
If you’re an old tech coot like me, you know that the “Imminent Death of the Internet” has been predicted for decades now. While the Internet is in no danger of dying anytime soon, the days of relying on the old core TCP/IP protocol IPv4 do appear to be coming to an end.
After years of delaying it with techniques like Network Address Translation (NAT), we’re finally really running out of IPv4 addresses. Major ISPs like Comcast, and Web sites such as YouTube now support IPv6. This time around, IPv6 really is getting attention in corporate networks and the Internet. Fortunately for the enterprise desktop, Windows 7 is also ready.
Early Windows versions of IPv6 were, ah, crude. Though that’s not to say that Windows 7 does a perfect job with IPv6 even now. Certainly, the people who appear to have IPv6 connectivity but no network access have learned this the hard way.
