Detailed IPv6 Adoption Review

IPv6 adoption has been a big topic in the industry since IPv6 inception. Internet Protocol version 6 is a communication protocol that enables sending and receiving packets of information. Billions of internet-connected devices, including personal computers or mobile devices, rely on IPv6.

Major websites and internet service providers (ISPs) enable IPv6, and the IPv6 internet society is growing; however, this growth is not as smooth as intended. IPv6 was first introduced in 1995. June 8, 2011, was declared the World IPv6 Day, and major companies across the globe enabled IPv6 on their websites for 24 hours.

Today, global IPv6 adoption doesn’t even reach 20%. What is the current IPv6 adoption progress, and what are the most significant IPv6 adoption challenges? Our detailed IPv6 adoption review provides answers to these questions.

IPv6 is an alternative to IPv4, developed by the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) to address the imminent IPv4 exhaustion. The initial plan was for IPv6 to replace IPv4; however, that hasn’t happened, primarily due to technical and financial constraints.

An IPv6 address is 128-bits long and has eight groups of hexadecimal characters separated by colons. There are nearly 4.3 billion IP addresses in the IPv4 infrastructure. The IPv6 infrastructure has approximately 3.4×10³⁸ IP addresses, which is 340 undecillion, or 340 trillion trillion trillion. 

IPv6 possesses features that IPv4 does not, and the most significant benefit of IPv6 is the level of performance and security that IPv4 cannot match. IPv6 requires the use of IPsec, and it has a more straightforward packet header. Furthermore, the header extension can extend the protocol without affecting the core packet structure.

While IPv6 may be superior in some regard, the technical differences cause obstacles, preventing IPv4 and IPv6 from communicating directly.

IPv5, also known as the Internet Stream Protocol (ST), was an experimental protocol, first defined in 1979. Although it went through revisions and updates, it was never implemented for public use.

IPv5 was primarily designed as a transport protocol for the Network Voice Protocol (NVP). Its purpose was to expand IPv4 with the capability to transport human speech, similarly to the Voice-over-Internet Protocol (VoIP) that emerged in 1995.

The failure of IPv5 was completely technical, and the main problems stemmed from QoS (Quality of Service) related obstacles as well as massive CPU and memory consumption. The IPv5 test phase lasted almost 20 years, which is close to the current duration of IPv6 adoption.

The IETF has drafted IPv7 and IPv8 concepts as well; however, they are purely experimental and will not be deployed for public use, just like IPv5. 

According to Google’s IPv6 Adoption statistics, the availability of IPv6 connectivity among Google users reached 37% in August 2021. IPv6 adoption by country statistics show that India leads with 61%, while Germany is in second place with 49% of IPv6 adoption. 119 countries have initiated IPv6 deployment; however, the remaining haven’t yet introduced IPv6 to their networks.

There’s clear progress in IPv6 adoption in Asian and South American countries, while African countries are yet to make any notable jumps. Reliance Jio Infocomm Ltd., an Indian mobile operator, is at the top of the list of network operators adopting IPv6 globally. In August 2021, it was at 91.43% in IPv6 adoption. T-Mobile USA, the operator that leads IPv6 adoption in the US, ranks 6th with around 91.21% of IPv6 introduced to their network.

Some of the biggest telecom companies in the US have already adopted significant IPv6 resources to their networks. This advancement comes from sheer necessity and scalability issues caused by the IPv4 shortage. Unfortunately, companies run into problems related to Network Address Translation (NAT) and the dual-stack environment.

Furthermore, although most IPv6 deployment occurs in the telecom industry, many web servers are still running IPv4. At the time of publication, the usage statistics of IPv6 as a site element on the web showed a 19.4% IPv6 adoption rate.

These are some of the most common issues concerning IPv6:

IPv6 should have replaced IPv4. While the latter continues to support most of the internet today, if we compare IPv4 vs. IPv6, the latter is the more advantageous Internet Protocol in several regards.

It is not yet clear how IPv6 will evolve. Some believe that IPv6 will completely replace IPv4. Others trust that IPv6 will exist as a parallel internet and dominate IoT and automotive industries. Overall, there’s little evidence suggesting that IPv6 will disintegrate. 

Looking at the statistics, we can see that many telecoms are heavily adopting IPv6, despite the fact that web servers are still at the early stage of IPv6 adoption. Due to this, we might need IPv4 as a necessary resource for the end-user, the home internet user.

All in all, it is unlikely that IPv6 will replace IPv4 completely in the near future because many countries are yet to start the IPv6 deployment process, which is highly time-consuming and presents significant technical boundaries.

Watch our webinar to learn more.