IPv6 fails to reach 5 percent of Internet

If you listened to Cisco in 2002 IPv6 would have be fully adopted by 2007.

Maxwell Cooter (Techworld)
10 March, 2009 08:37
Comments (4)

Tags | IPv6

Only a small percentage of the Internet supports the emerging protocol IPv6 despite the technology being mandated by the US government.

Figures from the web monitoring company Pingdom showed that just four percent of the Internet supports IPv6. Furthermore, an examination of the traffic at the Internet's biggest exchange AMS-IX showed that just 0.25 percent of Internet traffic is IPv6 and that the world is expected to run out of IP addresses by 2012. Pingdom doesn't pull punches on this, describing the situation as a "crisis".

That's not something that Internet numbering authority ICANN will go along with, "I don't think that a word like "crisis" is a helpful way to characterise the situation. Clearly, a lot of people need to do a lot of work but the work that needs to be done is achievable and in many cases has already started," said Leo Vegoda number resources manager at ICANN's IP address adjunct IANA.

Of course, It wasn't supposed to be like this: Pingdom showed a slide from a Cisco presentation from 2002 which suggested that IPv6 would be fully adopted by 2007. "Generally speaking, if you look at the current state of things, adoption will have to be sped up significantly over the coming 2-3 years. At the current rate, we'll have IPv6 fully deployed a decade or so later than when we need it, said a Pingdom spokesman.

Vegoda thinks that the situation will change when IP addresses will no longer be available for free. "IPv^ requires a significantly larger address space and for an ISP successfully selling an IPv4 based service a significantly larger address space is not terribly relevant while there isn't an immediate shortage of IPv4 address space, which can be obtained almost for free from an RIR (Regional Internet Registry)."

However, he believes that this situation is changing. "the biggest ISPs have been very aware of the situation for a long time and realise that they will be among the first affected when large blocks of IPv4 address space are no longer available for (just about) free. They have staff actively involved in theIETF for the remaining protocol tweaks that need to be developed."

However, the situation is healthier in Europe than it is in the rest of the world. According to a blog from Derek Morr from Pennsylvania State University who maintains a blog on IPv6 adoption, Europe is far ahead of the rest of the world in adoption and traffic, although he doesn't provide any numbers. Pingdom is also unable to provide continents-specific figures.

There's a lot of catching up that needs to be done if IPv6 adoption is to get back on track, however Vegoda thinks that it's possible. "while the low number of commercially available IPv6 services available today is not a good thing it isn't necessarily an insurmountable problem. It is possible for large, rapid deployments to be made and for commercial IPv6 services to be widely available in just a few years. I can't know what will happen but I am confident that rapid, widescale IPv6 deployment is possible," he said.

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Comments

Bill P

Tue 10/03/2009 - 11:14

Panic - it's a crisis!!! (not!)

Why are we still driving petrol powered cars when alternatives have been around for decades? It' because we adapt to changing needs. Yes, there is a limit on available IPv4 addresses, but rationalisation of IPv4 addresses will continue as will migration to IPv6 addresses.

Even though we are not privy to the Cisco slide presentation, your article says "...suggested that IPv6 would be fully adopted by 2007." - this does not mean it IPv6 WILL be fully adopted. Most, if not all, modern networking technology devices (eg, routers & switches) are compatible with both v4 and v6. It's just a matter of time until the change occurs, and at what level this is required. v4 to v6 translation mechanisms will suit most small businesses. If pressure is required anywhere it should be on ISP's, not end users.

Pasc

Thu 12/03/2009 - 19:07

We're not going to run out by 2012

Seriously. As many other wiser people have said before... when has humanity ever kept using a diminishing resource at the same rate until there was none left? In 2040, they'll be trying to introduce IPv12, and we'll all still be using NAT on IPv4 networks. It probably won't work properly, but when has that ever been a problem for the Internet?

duncs

Fri 13/03/2009 - 00:39

IPv6 isn't happening because people are lazy

Major ISPs are fairly well advanced in IPv6 deployment, and there's not necessarily much more they can do to speed things along. But there are two big things preventing adoption of IPv6.

1) Chicken and egg. Content providers won't invest the resources to make their content available over IPv6 if users aren't there to view it, and users won't upgrade if there is no content for them to look at. IPv4 still works fine for everyone.

2) People are lazy. IPv4 address exhaustion will not stop the internet working, but merely slow its growth. The internet won't implode.

Except it won't stop growing, of course.

What will happen is that organisations with vast holdings of IPv4 address space (eg. Class A or /8 blocks) will make money out of that by splitting it up and selling addresses to the highest bidder. Most organisations with large blocks "own" their address space, because it was allocated to them before all the resource allocation policies of RIRs and so on. When the RIRs run out of address space to allocate, a seller's market of IPv4 address space will be created.