Huston said that ISPs are already sitting on low margins and do not have the money to push IPv6 to customers.

"Go to your favorite venture capitalist and say 'I want to be an ISP'. By the time he stops laughing and [finds you want to run] IPv6 - the discussion gets terminated. No one wants to hear this. IPv6 is well ahead of adoption in this market so everyone is deferring. No one is running IPv6, because there is no business case for it," he said, adding that if we really wanted to leave a legacy to our children we'd review the crap we have today which is pretty ghastly and not going to sustain, he said.

"But how do you match that common endeavor with what happens in the office when the product manager gets in your ear and says 'you're over spending again'."

Huston's solution is to sacrifice the long term for the short term.

"Everything over http works just fine right now. NAT could be the perfect success. It was never planned, but it is everywhere and it works," he said.