I'll go first...
1. Setting up my router (Billion 7800N) to also handle IPv6 was nearly trivial
2. Everything that worked in IPv4-only still worked with IPv6 enabled alongside
3. Some devices could handle IPv6 and see what little there currently is that is IPv6-only (and I was able to feed Matthew's cats!)
4. I have some devices (and so will many consumers) that cannot handle IPv6 and likely never will. They will still work for as long as IPv4 is available
...which is where things get interesting.
- iPod Touch 1st generation. I wouldn't expect the battery to survive for more than a further year or so. So I suspect small mobile devices aren't going to be a concern when IPv4 becomes not universally available because they will all be dead.
- Linkstation NAS. I expect to be using this for at least another 5 years. This device does have some internet functionality as it can act as a bittorrent client. Other NASes have even more functionality; I think this kind of device is going to be impacted when IPv4 is not available.
- Windows 2000 PC. The sun has well and truly set on this OS. I think it will be reasonable for any ISP to say, when IPv4 can't be allocated, that Windows 2000 devices can't be supported any longer. In any case, this machine is likely to be converted to Ubuntu.
- Network printer. Mine at least has no internet functionality so, as long as I can have IPv4 inside my network, there won't be a problem. But there are web-connected home printers now which I suspect are IPv4 only.
- Wii. This is difficult to judge; consoles tend to have a very long lifetime, being used in spare rooms etc. once replaced by something more modern in the living room. In the case of the Wii many owners have never even connected them to the internet. I don't think the same can be said for the Xbox360 or PS3 (and I don't know if either is IPv6 capable)
- Dlink wireless bridge. This is the device I am most disappointed with as not only is it IPv4, but it appears to force everything behind it to be IPv4 as well.
- Blu-ray player. I expect this to be in use for another 10 years, potentially. However, its internet capability is limited to checking for firmware updates (which are infrequent, and can be done via disc as an alternative), and to BD-live (which I have thus far never used). So not a problem in itself, but...
There is an awful lot of consumer-level IPv4-only kit still on sale. I'd love to have iPlayer/LoveFilm integrated into my TV for example. I doubt that any internet TV is currently IPv6 capable. Richard Fletcher, to his credit, wants to ensure that Plusnet only supply IPv6-capable routers. But all ISPs are actually going to need to see the end of all IPv4-only kit before it becomes impossible to guarantee supply of an IPv4 address!
Worth further investigation:
A. Android devices. I have an Android 2.1 phone which mostly fails test-ipv6.com 's IPv6 tests. However, it has passed them once, using Firefox. It has also failed them several times even with Firefox
B. Can I just leave the router configured to handle IPv6 alongside at the end of the trial? I tried this by switching back to my regular account but leaving the router configured to handle IPv6 as well. The Windows 7 pc that I used to configure the router couldn't even log in to the router afterwards; I want to look at this some more.
C. Does everything still work if the router is not enabled for IPv6 but is still allocated both IPv4 and IPv6 addresses?
D. Linux, both in front of, and behind, my wireless bridge
E. I'd love to have a peek at what will happen when I can't get an IPv4 address but this can't be tested in the current trial
