For CTOs, CIOs, VPs of Engineering, and senior technical leaders still weighing the IPv6 decision.

New Book · Terry Sweetser

Making the IPv6 Decision

How to get past the laziness tax and lead through the transition

The global pool of IPv4 addresses ran out in 2011. IPv6 has been production-ready since the late 1990s. Thirty years later, half the world's networks still haven't deployed it. Not because the technology failed — because the decision never got made.

52,000+ Words, written for leaders not engineers
12 Chapters, prologue to epilogue
147 Meta-analyses synthesised on behaviour change
Buy on Amazon (AU) → Read the Opening ↓
Making the IPv6 Decision — book cover by Terry Sweetser
The Problem

Your organisation is paying a laziness tax, and it isn't on the balance sheet

If you are a CTO, CIO, VP of Engineering, or senior technical leader, your organisation is almost certainly paying monthly leasing fees for IPv4 addresses at $0.38–$0.45 per address, indefinitely. Your network team may call dual-stack a transition strategy. In most organisations it is something else — a mechanism for comfortable procrastination that lets every stakeholder defer without anyone owning the outcome.

The engineers in your organisation know exactly what needs to happen. What is missing is a mandate from someone with the authority to make it happen. That person is you.

Making the IPv6 Decision, Prologue
Chapter 1

Why the education approach fails

A synthesis of 147 meta-analyses on behaviour change shows knowledge-based interventions have a negligible effect on real-world action. Thirty years of white papers proved it.

Chapter 2

The IPv4 market as a liability

Its documented price trajectory, and what treating leased addresses as stable infrastructure cost is actually doing to your balance sheet.

Chapter 3

The dual-stack trap

Why running both address families indefinitely is the enemy of completing the transition, not a safe middle path.

Chapter 7

The four board questions

The questions that reframe IPv6 as a governance and risk decision instead of a technology upgrade — and demand a response.

From the Book

The opening of the Prologue

Prologue — The 30-Year Problem

Engineers have sat in meetings like this more times than anyone cares to count. Someone — usually an engineer — puts IPv6 on the agenda. The deck is well-prepared. The numbers are real. The argument is sound. Leadership listens with the slightly glazed attention of people who have heard a version of this before, nods at the right moments, and then — at the exact point where a decision is needed — asks one of a handful of identical questions. Is this urgent? What breaks if we don't? Are we behind the industry?

The honest answers are: yes, eventually; nothing yet; not visibly. And with those three answers, the meeting moves on. Someone approves the invoice for another batch of leased IPv4 addresses. The engineer goes back to their desk. The problem, which has been knowable and solvable for thirty years, stays exactly where it is.

The gap in that room is not knowledge. It is not even willingness. It is a mismatch between the language the engineer speaks and the language in which the leader actually makes decisions. This book is about that gap.

What's Inside

Twelve chapters, prologue to epilogue

Every technical concept is translated into consequence, not mechanism. Written for the person the engineer reports to.

Who This Is For

Written for the person the engineer reports to

Making the IPv6 Decision assumes technical literacy but not deep network engineering expertise. The arguments are financial, organisational, and behavioural — the language in which infrastructure decisions actually get made at senior levels. If your organisation is still paying IPv4 leasing costs, running dual-stack as a permanent arrangement, or treating IPv6 as something to revisit when conditions are more settled — conditions are never more settled — this is the book your engineers have been waiting for you to read.

Secondary audience: policy makers, infrastructure investors, and development economists working on the equity dimension of global address allocation. If you're the engineer rather than the leader, the operational deployment side of this is covered in the IPv6 Deployment & Training Advisory →

Get the Book

Hardcover, paperback, and Kindle

Available now through Amazon. 208 pages.

Hardcover

For the boardroom shelf and executive gifting.

View on Amazon →

Paperback

The full 52,000-word manuscript, cover to cover.

View on Amazon →

Kindle

Read it before your next board meeting. Included with Kindle Unlimited.

View on Amazon →
Before You Buy

Common questions

Who is Making the IPv6 Decision written for?

CTOs, CIOs, VPs of Engineering, and senior technical leaders who are technically literate but not network engineers. It assumes no protocol-level knowledge and translates every technical concept into financial, organisational, and governance terms.

Is this a technical how-to guide for deploying IPv6?

No. The book does not explain IPv6 protocol mechanics — that is what your engineers already know. It explains why the decision to deploy hasn't been made, using evidence from behavioural science, market data, and governance frameworks. For the deployment side, see IPv6 Deployment & Training Advisory →

What formats is the book available in?

Hardcover, paperback, and Kindle, available through Amazon.

Does the author offer speaking or briefing sessions based on the book?

Yes. Terry Sweetser is available for board briefings, executive workshops, and speaking engagements built around the book's framework. Use the form below or email [email protected].

About the Author

Terry Sweetser

Terry Sweetser

30+ years building critical internet infrastructure across Asia-Pacific. Deployed IPv6 at national ISP scale, trained over 2,000 network engineers in person across 23 economies through APNIC programs, and led the Project IPv6-First research documenting a 79.2% stable native IPv6 SOHO network. Founder of IEISI, the Internet Engineering & Infrastructure Strategic Initiative. Based in Brisbane, Queensland.

Bulk Orders & Speaking

Bring the book's framework to your board

Board briefings, executive workshops, and bulk orders for leadership teams — built around the framework in Making the IPv6 Decision.

[email protected]