d the ITU. While there was a general agreement that a new data network was desirable, there wasn't any agreement about what it should be based on. The TCP/IP Internet was then probably the least likely to become what was then called the 'Information Superhighway'. It was the 'dark horse', SO to speak. In addition, most other standards groups, governments, and large telcos didn't even recognize the IETF because it was purely voluntary and didn't have any de jure underpinning. We weren't considered to be the 'grown-ups'. The result was that, as more people started to hear that the TCP/IP Internet didn't have a technical future because it might run out of addresses soon, it became a significant political problem. The development and standardization of IPv6 fixed this political problem. We might not now have the current TCP/IP Internet if IPv6 had not been developed. xviii Foreword IPv6 also solved the technical problem of running out of IP addresses. This is the major problem that it was intended to solve and it is the main reason that IPv6 is being deployed today. I have concluded that a good way of evaluating new technologies (networking and otherwise) is if the problem they purport to solve stays the same. That is, is it a solution looking for a problem, or is it focused on a real problem? IPv6 is clearly an example of the latter. It was designed to solve the IPv4 address exhaustion problem and didn't try to evolve into solving some other problem. This is the reason that it is being deployed today. As much as the Internet has grown from the early days, I think that the growth has only really begun. We have gone from the days where networked computers were very large and filled rooms to where a networked computer fits in a shirt pocket, from where many people shared a single large computer to where every person has many computers. This phase of the Internet is not complete as not everywhere in the world do people have access to computers and the Internet - but we are getting there. IPv6 is a necessary element in t