Joy has the scoop on plans by various government sponsors and the Internet2 project to try the first wide deployment of IPv6 (once called IPng) in the United States, expanding on efforts like the 6bone to see if IPv6 is ready for widespread use.

For now, tech-savvy users interested in experimenting with deploying IPv6 can obtain IPv6 service via Freenet6; you can even obtain your own public 2**48 address block if you’re so inclined—and, perhaps more importantly, if you’re prepared to deal with the security implications of having globally-routable addresses behind your home router. Freenet6 works by using a IPv6-in-v4 tunnel to get IPv6 traffic to the IPv6 backbone, then routing your packets normally.

As Joy notes, the IP address shortage is somewhat less critical in North America—largely because North American ISPs had huge allocations of IP addresses which they’ve been able to effectively subdivide and pass down using CIDR—but nonetheless we’ll need to make the transition eventually, if only so we can keep talking to the rest of the world.