Almost like for people, it took around 18 years for IPv6 become mature & trigger its way to change today's Internet. We're mostly used to frenetic changes. However, bear in mind that slow shifts in Technology are often the most pervasive & with greater impact in the end.
Last June 27th 2015 the US has largely exceed the 20% threshold of v6 hits to Google servers. It takes me back to a meeting some years ago at ISOC headquarters in Washington where we identified 20% of traffic as the breakthrough event meaning IPv6 Internet was actually born.
20% seemed to be really far back in 2012 where some countries started to rise over 1%, identified as of kicking off massive deployments, as a result of the IPv6 Global Launch event.
US is not really the first country over 20% but its demographic relevance and technology superpower role in the global network truly makes a difference. In Europe, Germany, another demography and technology reference, has climbed up to 16,25%.
The following diagram (source:
Eric Vyncke stats) depicts key countries growth in North America, SouthAmerica, Europe and APAC.
Considering %, Belgium (34,75%) is the Internet6 world leading country, while Peru (14,79%) takes this role in SouthAmerica followed by Brasil (2,74%). In APAC, Malaysia (7,83%) and Japan (6,88%) take the lead while we are awaiting that China (0,93%) and India (0,47%), the world demographic superpowers awake.
As in previous posts, I made myself some calculations to roughly estimate where Internet6 users are massively appearing in absolute terms. Therefore, Digital companies may estimate how many and where Internet6 users really are.
Internet Service Providers
Now that Internet6 is becoming a reality in the most technology-advanced countries, If you are looking for an ISP providing IPv6, you may consider those with highest deployments as of the Top 100
measurements published by Internet Society that operate in your country.
A key aspect is that mobile IPv6 deployment is happening much faster rather than fixed lines (xDSL, cable, fibber, etc).
The following list shows the most relevant mobile Telcos that have a significant IPv6 measured deployment. It is calculated by combining the above-linked ISOC Top-100 list and the global operator groups included in the
Wikipedia top 40 Telecom operators (ranked by revenues).
Digital Products/Companies
The largest Digital Companies have already positioned themselves on the Internet6. If you are a Digital company and you are not still there you might be exposing to higher chances of extinction.
The same way IPv6-only mobile networks are happening (e.g. T-Mobile USA) we will see soon IPv6-only services or specific features of services, wait and see! tic-tac-tic....
Let's summarize, in headlines, what's going on as of July 2015:
Apple iPhone/iPAD.
Akamai CDN. This Content Delivery Network is providing IPv6 since years ago and it offers nice
stats on IPv6 hits evolution together with its state-of-the-Internet IPv6 related
report.
Android OS. As described in this
OS comparison table.
Chrome WebRTC. As described
here.
Facebook Services. A
recent report shows that Facebook is by far one of the most clever digital companies conquering the Internet6:
- 9% worldwide traffic to Facebbok is IPv6. 3% to Facebook messenger and 12% to Instagram.
- Traffic to Facebook services over IPv6 doubles every year.
- Facebook IPv6-only Cloud reaches 90% v6 traffic (> 100 Terabits per second), targets 100% for 2015Q2.
- USA v6-enabled mobile users surf 30-40% faster than regular IPv4 mobile Internet users.
Google & Youtube sites
- 7,74% worldwide traffic is IPv6.
- Google computes and provides the most used IPv6 world deployment stats.
OpenStack Cloud Hosting
On the other hand, some key offerings/players are still missing:
AWS Amazon hosting: AWS does not support native IPv6 although it does offer IPv6 transport to its Elastic Load Balancers (ELB), which
provides a mechanism for getting your web content reachable using IPv6.
As a consequence, enabling IPv6 in your services hosted in AWS will mean an extra cost.
This
2013 post calculates the total yearly cost for IPv6 in an hypothetical typical example:
$219.60.
An alternative is to use IPv6 enabled cloud/hosting. Here you can find a
complete list. In my case I have been successfully using
hosting virtual.
Github opensource code repository: The place where most opensource developers publish their code is not reachable over IPv6 and code publication is only available over IPv4 connections. Gitorious was enabled in the past but they lost it because they moved their servers to AWS Amazon. One potential alternative today is installing
your own Gitlab server or using any commercial service supporting IPv6, for instance
host virtual.
Twitter micro-blogging: Although some servers have recently got IPv6 addresses, service is still v4-only reachable.
Entrepreneurs, Developers, Startups & Investors
This is a critical field where the Internet6 uptake and concepts awareness is extremely low while, on the contrary, it might be an excellent opportunity as current big players may adapt slower than new service infrastructures and IPv6-enabled users footprint is exponentially growing.
Education is key here as it will provide a competing advantage to those listening. If you are organizing developer events, hackathons or challenges be sure Internet6 is considered and network infrastructure is providing it.
If I were a seed-capital investor and a startup focused on digital Internet products would not have knowledge and plans regarding the Internet6 (today >20% Google USA hits are IPv6) I would not put any single cent there... On the contrary I would ask them if they know how IPv6 is evolving in their expected footprint and if they have thought on any competing advantage that might be provided in their portfolio to this emerging group of customers.
Monetization of IPv6
In other words: "Where most of IPv6-related revenues will come from ?"
Let's make a brief summary of what is discussed today:
The most solid and predictable source of benefits will undoubtfully be the support and services/infrastructure updates for SMEs and large corporations. Those potential customers have largely subcontracted their IT and IPv6 has not been considered at all but will have a big impact on normal operations, new architectures/services and security approaches/concerns.
A second line, IPv6 education courses to IT companies and SMEs/large companies, will be a subsequent good option too.
A third potential source of benefit is positioning in the Internet6 with existing products that are not still provided by dominant players today. For instance, several cloud providers are providing native IPv6 hosting services which are not offered by the mainstream Cloud providers today. There are many examples, for instance there are no DIY dashboard server sites, etc.
A forth, more risky but also potentially more fruitful possibility is to design new Digital products, services and architectures of services that do not fit well on the current v4-Internet but may work well on the Internet6. New architectures for IoT are already being tested, but not massively exploited today. Also improving P2P services today or even P2P approaches to existing services might take benefit too.
The future is not written! A start-up doing well this way may even replace one of the giants today.
Further Reading
Jari Arkko (IETF Chair) thoughts on
Sudden changes and IPv6 for everyone.
Cisco forecasts IPv6 will be 34% of
total Internet traffic in 2019 (it is 6% in 2014). It also predicts
52,2% of IPv6 global mobile traffic (It was 13,3% in 2014).
AKAMAI says IPv6 strong growth keeps on according to their own
studies.
Apple updates its IPv6 strategy with IOS9 and Capitan Operating Systems. They will go from nearly 50% preference up to choose IPv6 99% of the time.
Thread IoT IPv6 based stack.
Swisscom enables Internet6 for 67% of its users.
Adding IPv6 requirements to your RFP. Read it
here.
Technical Readings:
APNIC's "
Design Architecture Options for IPv6 Deployment in Broadband Access Networks"
ARIN's "
Preparing Applications for IPv6".
IPv6 tech essentials in
one page.
Google's IPv6
FAQ.
What Every
Network Admin Should Know About IPv6.
Alcatel's paper on 464XLAT in mobile networks
