Work with IPv6 continues. I do see changes in my customer base. In every meeting, regardless of the topic, I get a question about “that IPv6 stuff”. People are curious on what’s happening.
My recent answer has been ‘-It’s making huge progress. It’s gone from not being on the to-do list to “Yes, hmmm. We will have to do something about that, put a priority on it.“ That’s progress.When trying to change the world, one has to be observant of every little change, regardless of how small it is. My next comment usually is something along the lines of “Aren’t you using the Internet in your business? If so, why only stay partially connected? I thought Internet was important for you.” And that is becoming more and more true. Let’s check some news in the IPv6 news flow!
Akamai report 460 times increase in IPv6 requests!
Akamai publishes quarterly “State of the Internet” reports. The one for Q2 2012 reports a large spike in IPv6 requests – an over 460 times increase in traffic on the Akamai content-delivery network! They attribute a lot of the growth to the “World IPv6 Launch” event on June 6th. (via CircleID)
4% of top web sites has IPv6 connectivity!
Dan Wing maintains a check list on the IPv6 connectivity of the top web sites on Alexa. In June 2011, about 1.3 % of the sites had IPv6 connectivity. One and a half year later, the number has grown to 4%. That’s a huge change, considering the large amount of traffic we’re talking about.
Romania is in the lead!
IPv6 deployment in Sweden according to Cisco 6LAB
According to the Cisco 6LAB Romania is in the lead in IPv6 deployment. The overall IPv6 deployment is 71%, compared with Sweden at 24%. In Romania 8% of the users have IPv6 connectivity, in Bhutan 7%, Japan 2% and the USA 2%.
The report behind the 6LAB points out the methodology used, data sources and gives a summary of where IPv6 is heading. The author of the report, Hugo Kaczmarek, says “IPv6 migration of the last 10 years can be represented as a classic Mexican standoff” – everyone was waiting for someone else. The author points out how the World IPv6 Launch changed this landscape by focusing on getting content up and accessible over IPv6. After the launch, few people can say “there’s no content on IPv6”.
“Basically no one could see a benefit in being the first mover, and the risk was perceived too high. At the same time everyone understood that it was a move, the industry needed, to make sure the Internet could continue to grow, prosper, and innovate. If anything, this is the landscape the World IPv6 Launch (6th June 2012) event has changed forever.”
The author, like me, agrees that there is an attitude change happening in enterprises and use this graphic to show the change:
Summary: We’re making progress!
As I said earlier, my feeling is that we are making progress. Change takes time and you have to start with attitudes and knowledge, then move to implementation. Talk about IPv6 in every possible network-related discussion, from web site scripting to firewall design and network architecture. Include it by default in all new projects. Lab with it at home, in the office and while playing with that cool application you wrote in LUA. Ask for it when buying new products or services. All the figures for IPv6 points upwards, the Internet growth will clearly happen on IPv6. Make sure you are connected to all of Internet, not just the IPv4 side of it!
Well, that’s all for this week. I need to focus on adding IPv6 to my SIP survivability server and test dual stack, single stack and broken stack deployments (NAT). Have a great IPv6 weekend!
/O