Infrastructure as Code and IPv6

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Imagine managing a city's water infrastructure where every single valve, pipe, and pressure gauge must be manually adjusted by hand, one at a time, every time demand shifts. For decades, network administration operated exactly this way, relying on technicians typing commands into individual switch and router consoles late into the night. Today, the sheer scale of modern environments has rendered this artisanal approach impossible. We have transitioned from hand-crafting networks to manufacturing them. Concurrently, the actual "real estate" of the internet has run out of addresses, forcing a fundamental upgrade to the protocol that routes our traffic. Mastering modern network operations requires understanding two massive shifts: how we automate the deployment of infrastructure, and how we implement the vast, practically inexhaustible address space of the next-generation Internet Protocol.

Traditional network administration relied on manual, device-by-device configuration, much like manually turning individual physical water valves.
Traditional network administration relied on manual, device-by-device configuration, much like manually turning individual physical water valves.
Source: Water valves with spigots by Paul Goyette, CC BY-SA 2.0.
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