1. First, focus on the big picture. You (or whoever the IPv6 "transition manager" will be) needs to stay out of the weeds. There are tons of small tasks that need to be done to get to IPv6, and it is easy to get sucked in. Someone needs to direct activities across the entire organization, and that person simply will not have time to be making configuration changes on routers and servers. Make sure you are seeing the forest and not getting lost in the trees.

2. Second, don't go it alone. If you will be focused on the big picture, who will do all the actual work of transitioning the organization to IPv6 (such as software upgrades, hardware upgrades, routing changes, OS changes, firewall policies, etc.). This is where the concept of "Transition Areas" comes into play. The basic idea is to break down the organization into functional groups and to spread the load around the entire organization, using slices of time from nearly everyone to do small tasks. This not only takes the burden off of a small number of individuals, but also achieves another critical goal - introducing IPv6 into the culture and getting everyone thinking about it.

3. And third, prioritize. You don't need to do a forklift upgrade or replace every IPv4 address with an IPv6 address across the entire organization all at once. Rather, focus on one goal at a time. The most important piece is your Internet-facing (primarily Web and email). You'll want to make sure you don't lose your Internet presence as IPv6 users come online across the globe. Next, engage your organization's desktop team to ensure internal user workstations are transitioned to IPv6 so they can access the Internet and business partners over IPv6. Once these two milestones are complete, you will be in good shape and can slowly but surely transition the rest of the infrastructure and internal applications to IPv6 at your convenience.

So, will the sky fall if we don't deploy IPv6 today? Probably not. But, the longer you wait to get your content on the IPv6 Internet, the more you risk your customers losing access. Start planning for the transition now to ensure uninterrupted delivery of content to your customers.

in Network World's LAN & WAN section.