24 September 2013

IPv6 Deployment Hits 2%, Keeps Growing

By Internet SocietyGuest Author

This week the Internet passed a significant milestone in global IPv6 deployment: the percentage of users reaching Google services over IPv6 crossed the 2% threshold, according to Google's regularly published statistics. This is still a relatively small percentage of course, but it is important as a measure of increased usage of IPv6 globally.

Google crossed the 1% threshold on 27 October 2012, and there are now more than twice as many IPv6-connected users since World IPv6 Launch on 6 June 2012. 2013 marks the third straight year global IPv6 usage has doubled.

This bodes well for continued IPv6 deployment. We have recently seen many network operators around the world start rolling out IPv6 to their subscribers, and many network operators who had already begun that process have continued to increase their own offerings. In the last year we've seen:

  • Telefonica del Peru in South America roll out IPv6 on a large scale
  • Deutsche Telekom in Germany and Swisscom in Switzerland launch their IPv6 deployments
  • Time Warner Cable in North America join other major North American network operators with its own IPv6 offering
  • Two operators in Singapore, StarHub and M1, start rolling out IPv6 for their end users

As part of ongoing World IPv6 Launch activities, we continue to report on IPv6 deployment using inputs from Google, Facebook, Yahoo, and Akamai, who share measurements of IPv6 deployment from various network operators around the world. If you are enabling IPv6 in your network, please join this measurement activity so that the world can see your commitment to IPv6.

These measurements provide an important perspective on IPv6 deployment, but there is another view. In October at the Broadband World Forum, to be held in Amsterdam, Netherlands, we will host an IPv6 session with several network operators where we will explore what IPv6 deployment looks like from their perspectives. For a network operator, the amount of IPv6 traffic grows very rapidly as end users are enabled because so much popular web content is already available via IPv6. We expect these network operators to report numbers that are much higher as a percentage than the aggregates seen by global web companies.

Join us in Amsterdam to hear stories from the forefront of IPv6 deployment and to celebrate another significant step on the road toward the universal deployment of IPv6.

Disclaimer: Viewpoints expressed in this post are those of the author and may or may not reflect official Internet Society positions.