Earlier this week Akamai, the world’s largest content distribution network (CDN), which supplies content for thousands of websites announced that they will be launching their IPv6 services in April. This is another great milestone in IPv6 deployment for the content side of the transaction. Still missing and moving much slower is the access side of the network, the broadband providers. While some providers such as Comcast and Time Warner have announced trials and some limited production services ,their roll outs are still very limited. Until the access networks have millions of IPv6 enabled subscribers, the total amount of IPv6 traffic will be very small.
Category Archives: IPv6
2011 IP address usage statistics
Geoff Huston has recently published on his website his annual look at IP address usage in the various regions of the world.
A few notes from the report:
- With the exhaustion of the IPv4 pool in the APNIC region, the total number of IPv4 addresses allocated declined from the previous year. In 2011, 201 million addresses were allocated compared with 248 million in 2010.
- A substantial “run on the bank” occurred as the APNIC pool depleted in 2011. The number of addresses jumped from an average of 2.3 million addresses per week in 2010 to 6.9 million in the first 4 months of 2011.
- Geoff’s RIR exhaustion model still predicts a depletion of the RIPE IPv4 pool in mid-2012. ARIN’s IPv4 pool is currently expected to last until around the end of 2013.
Google & Others Announce Launch Date of IPv6 Production Services
Google today via their official blog announced that they will be launching production IPv6 services on June 6, 2012 as part of the “World IPv6 Launch”.
http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2012/01/ipv6-countdown-to-launch.html
Zdnet is reporting that other large content providers including Facebook, Bing, and Yahoo have also committed to June 6th as a formal launch date. Now all we need is the access layer (broadband providers) to start providing service and we might begin to see some serious movement toward IPv6.
http://www.zdnet.com/blog/facebook/facebook-google-bing-yahoo-to-enable-ipv6-on-june-6-2012/7526
Infoworld says “don’t worry about IPv6”
Infoworld published an article today which mostly encourages people to “get ready” rather than act regarding the IPv4 / IPv6 transition.
Now is the time for leadership from the Internet community, not more time to sit back and watch what enfolds.
http://www.infoworld.com/d/networking/ipv4-doomsday-wont-hit-in-2012-experts-say-182790?page=0,0
Comcast starts their IPv6 pilot deployment
Comcast has started their first pilot market deployment of IPv6 in a limited part of California. This first phase supports directly connected CPE, where a single computer is directly connected to a cable device. A subsequent phase will support home gateway devices.
Comcast IPv6 Information Center
http://blog.comcast.com/2011/11/ipv6-deployment.html
Hopefully we can get to thousands of users with all types of home networks before IPv4 exhaustion occurs in North America.