That's like asking a telephone lineman about IPv6. Diff layer in the OSI stack.

My 67 year old grandpa has vague idea what ipv6 is.

He probably was around when the standard was defined. It's amazing this is taking 30 years to replace IPv4.

The transition is definitely taking a long time, are there additional reasons for delaying the switch to IPv6 other than the mitigation of the problem with NAT/private networks?

It requires cooperation from perhaps fifty thousand organisations (there are 45k ASes that announce more than one prefix, and I'm guessing that there may be 5k software vendors). Some of those have orgcharts that aren't very friendly to this kind of change.

Adding to that, even clueful places may be held back by one or more vendor or provider, all of which need to have working v6 support before you yourself can deploy it.

I thought ipv4 and ipv6 addresses could be provided simultaneously (or rather, ipv6 has provisions to be mapped to/from ipv4); you just wouldn't see any real benefits until you could switch wholesale (because you'd still be limited to whatever ipv4 can do)

That is, it was my understanding that there was no real blocker to supporting it in the interim, except for the lack of any immediate benefit. Though I'm also not clear on whether supportinf both introduces any significant complexity

They can be provided simultaneously, that's the normal case.

Suppose an ISP wants to provide IPv6 besides v4. What does that ISP need? Well, first, v6 from the upstreams, that's simple, and v6-capable name servers, routers, that's simple too nowadays.

But there's more. Suppose that the ISP has some homegrown scripts connected to its monitoring or accounting, written by a ninny years ago, uncommented, and some of those assume IPv4, and noone wants to touch them.

Suppose that ISP outsources its support, and the outsourcing company promises to do the needful regarding IPv6 support but never actually does it.

Suppose that that ISP is in a country where ISPs have to answer automated requests from the police or courts, and one of the software packages involved in that has a v6-related bug. Or the ISP worries that it's poorly tested and the ISP's lawyer advises that if there are any bugs, the ISP will be criminally liable.

And so on. Enabling IPv6 may need a fair number of ducks lined up.

Did you ask them ten years ago? Comcast has had v6 for ages.

the point was, i believe, that the techs frequently don't know what they are talking about.

A lot of techs for large orgs don’t. I had a grid electrician in a while ago, replacing unshielded triple phase from the pole, who was convinced that they only use AC in the US, and that here in Europe it’s all DC, so safer, and this is why I can work on it without shutting it down, mate.

The mind boggles. These people maintain our infrastructure.

Wow, that's wrong on several different levels. I can't even begin...

I understand that you don't need an electrical engineering degree to be an electrician, but still, these are some fairly basic concepts in the electric power industry, especially the safety aspects, so you'd think someone working on live wires would know better.

Honestly, any halfway-intelligent person who travels internationally should know that Europe runs at 240VAC/60Hz, because this is really important if you want to use your American electronics there without a transformer. (When I went to Europe last, I brought my laptop, and an adapter which does not convert voltage, only the prongs, but that's OK because the laptop's power brick says it works on everything from 100VAC to 240VAC, as do a lot of electronics these days. But you have to check this first, you can't assume! Plugging a 120V-only device into this adapter could cause a fire.)

Europe runs on 230V 50Hz.

Yep, you're right.

Luckily, the 50/60Hz stuff really doesn't matter these days except maybe for some digital clocks on appliances.

It's instructive I think to look at the job ads for these technicians. It's frequently something on the close order of: can be professional, knows how to drive, can handle close proximity customer service, knows some handyman skills, and oh by the way maybe has seen an Ethernet cable before.

Not that there's anything wrong with that, everyone was entry-level at some point, but engineers who do capacity planning and traffic engineering they are emphatically not.

To contrast this, every Comcast tech (3) that's been in my home has been very knowledgeable. Once they see I'm a "geek" they unload with technical knowledge and generally talk my ear off. That's how I learned my town has less nodes/per subscriber than any of the surrounding towns which is why my Internet speed is frequently ass.