How big is the Internet6 right today?

Let's start 2013 with a brief snapshot of the Internet6 size right today.

Continuously tracking Internet6 size is a key input for Internet products architects/developers/marketing in order to better foresee a possible exponential growth date. By that time, v6 developments should have got to their commercial portfolio, if possible before competitors do.

Basically, we pay attention to three KPIs (Key Performance Indicators): natively connected users, contents & services.In this post, I just analyze the first two, that's contents and users. In forthcoming posts I will try to analyze specific widely-used and/or emerging services as they normally need a stand-alone study.

1. CONTENTS

This KPI is pretty straightforward and simply calculated by checking DNS AAAA records, expected to hold the site's IPv6 address, and making an IPv6 probe connection if potentially available.

There are many sites measuring this way and building nice graphs. I particularly like this one:

This shows off that, globally -for the 500 most accessed Web sites (prestigious Alexa ranking)- almost 25% sites are hosted in the Internet6 (in addition to the v4 one, of course).

Besides the numbers above, it's relevant to track the Top-10 sites that normally concentrate most of the users' traffic. I did the test myself today with Alexa global Top-10.
(Green-bold means YES, red = NO)
1  - Facebook                                     
2  - Google
3  - YouTube
4  - Yahoo!
5  - Baidu.com     (But they test at http://ipv6.baidu.com/)
6  - Wikipedia
7  - Windows live
8  - Amazon.com
9  - QQ.com
10 - Twitter

Not bad!  Isn't it? Let's see if 2013 improves the list anyway :-)

Beyond Top-10, we find some key sites that also do fulfill v6-accesibility:
12 - Blogspot.com
13 - Gloogle India
21 - Bing
83 - Netflix

Checking sites yourself is easy, just try at this IPv6-test-site.
For sites we should be tracking during 2013, check the appendix at the end of this post.

2. USERS

Besides actual numbers provided by ISPs, the best inputs for this KPI are indirectly provided by content sites measurements as they are regularly accessed by almost all users. Also traffic measurements at Internet key intermediate points/nets are valuable. My favorite inputs list follows:

2.1 Google Stats. 

Are there human users that don't access google almost everyday? Ok, those are not included in these stats. However, I believe the picture provided is still the most accurate one. ;-)

Good news, in 2013 we've got over the 1% threshold stated as a turning point by several key Internet players.

2.2 Cisco Stats

Cisco Labs site offers some nice graphs too, that are actually based on multiple sources, including: Google stats (as described in the previous point), Alexa measurements, whois databases from RIRs (RIPE, ARIN, APNIC, AFRINIC, LACNIC) and several other sources as detailed in their site.

 Let's see the global mouse-sensible picture (with some countries data I highlighted on the right side):

By clicking in the above map, you'll get the recent evolution for each country.
Growth at Germany and US appears to be relevant and that's key, as both nations have a significant influence in technology adoption worlwide and at EU scale.

2.3 Akamai IPv6 hits

A lot of Web pages, video and other contents are delivered over Akamai's worldwide  Content-Delivery-Network (CDN). Therefore, the number and evolution of hits to IPv6 contents give as a good picture of Internet6 actual usage.

Akamai offers nice IPv6 stats. I compiled in the following picture the evolution so far.
Quite impressive results of 2011&2012 ISOC-organized World IPv6 Days, aren't they?

2.4 Traffic at main Internet eXchange points (IX)

Normally, I track AMSIX (Amsterdarm) and DE-CIX in Germany. Both show off a good rising-up trend. In AMSIX for instance, today's peak is 9,5 Gbps and regular IPv4 traffic is peaking at 2Tb/s. 

APPENDIX

Some Alexa Top-500 web-sites not in the Internet6 -as tested today- we should be keep on tracking in 2013 are:
5  - Baidu.com   
7  - Windows live
8  - Amazon.com
10 - Twitter
11 - Taobao
14 - LinkedIN
15 - Yahoo! Japan
19-  eBay
23 - Wordpress.com
36 - Pinterest.com
37 - Apple Inc.
38 - Paypal
46 - The Internet Movie Database
56 - BBC on-line
65 - Flickr
73 - instagram.com
74 - Thepiratebay.se
76 - CNN Interactive
114 - Wal-Mart Online
118 - The Weather Channel
124 - IndiaTimes