Internet Protocol Version 6: Dead or Alive?

Internet Protocol (IP) is the narrow waist of multilayeredInternet protocol stack which defines the rules for data sent across networks. IPv4 is the fourth version of IP and firstcommercially available for deployment set by ARPANET in 1983which is a 32 bit long address and can support up to 2^32 devices.In April 2017, all Regional Internet Registries (RIRs) confirmedthat IPv4 addresses are exhausted and cannot be allocatedanymore implying any new organization requesting a block ofInternet addresses will be allocated IPv6. This creates troubles of interoperability, migration and deployment, and thereforeorganizations hesitated to use IPv6 borrowing IPv4 addressesfrom other big organizations instead. Currently, when IPv4 isnot available, and IPv6 is not adopted for around 20 years,the question arises whether IPv6 will still be accepted by thecomputer society or will it have an end of life soon with alternatebetter protocol such as ID based networks taking its place. Thispaper claims that IPv6 has lost its deployment window and can besafely skipped when new ID based protocols are available which not only have simple interoperability, deployment and migrationguidelines but also provide advanced features as compared toIPv6. The paper provides answers to these questions with acomprehensive comparison of IPv6 with its available alternativesand reasons of IPv6 failures in its adoption. Finally, the paperdeclares IPv6 as a dead protocol and suggests to use neweravailable protocols in future.