IPv6 Traffic Volumes Are Low, But Nobody Knows How Low

netbuzz writes "As the June 8 World IPv6 Day experiment draws near, there is universal agreement that little IPv6 traffic is traversing the Internet at the moment. The event is designed in part to increase that volume. However, it will be difficult for Internet policymakers, engineers and the user community at large to tell how the upgrade to IPv6 is progressing because no one has accurate or comprehensive statistics about how much Internet traffic is IPv6 versus IPv4." And in case you don't know much about IPv6 and why it matters, dave.io has kindly provided "a primer on the IPv6 transition: why it's cool, how to get started with it and what's changed."

Comments

Re:ISP:s at fault

[HikingStick]

I agree that ISPs are one of the major barricades. Since around the first of the year, I've been pressing our ISP for information on their IPv6 support, so we can get in on testing some things on IPv6 day. No one seems to know anything. I've called sales, I've called support, and I've had my queries escalated to "senior technical staff"--none of them knew of anything about their preparations for IPv6. What was even more scary (though perhaps expected) was that most of them had never heard of IPv6.

I'm using it

[Cimexus]

A timely article - I just got full native IPv6 running for my home internet connection last week (dual stack, of course).

Works well - the DSL modem connects like usual and the ISP assigns you a dynamic IPv6 /64 for the PPP session (ie. the modem's public IPv6 address), a static /60 for your LAN (your router then dishes out IPs within this subnet to the machines on the network via prefix delegation), and of course your good old standard single IPv4 address.

My Linux, Win 7, Mac OSX machines, iPad and iPhone all had no issue correctly picking up their IPv6 address and using it. The only things on the home network that are still IPv4 only are my old D-link NAS and the Wii. Attempting to access something, IPv6 is tried first, and it that fails it'll fall back to IPv4. Most Google sites are IPv6 enabled it seems, though other than that, the vast majority of stuff I access is still IPv4 only at this stage.

It really is weird having every machine in the house with a unique, globally addressable IP again after all these years behind a single public address using NAT. No more port forwarding.

The real reason why IPv6 traffic is low

[simoncpu was here]

There isn't enough porn. What ever happened to the free IPv6 Porn project? :)

Re:IPv6

[ledow]

http://banjo.employees.org/~dwing/aaaa-stats.html

The embarrassing thing

[Alioth]

...The embarrassing thing is that Facebook, a site for doing social things that isn't about tech is available over IPv6, but Slashdot, which is all about tech still is not available over IPv6.

Re:Question About Cable Routers

[vlm]

How can the average homeowner tell if their cable modem/router is IPv6 capable? Or, is this a non-issue?

WRT to cablemodems:

You can only run, eh, "8 megs" or so over a single downstream channel... If your local cableco is selling services running faster than that, they must be doing channel bonding to do it, which requires DOCSIS 3 link layer protocol, and DOCSIS 3 certification / licensing / whatever has mandatory ipv6 support. Also no one in China has manufactured a non DOCSIS 3 hardware compatible cablemodem for I would guess a couple years now. Does not exclude the possibility of your local cableco having a warehouse full of brand new, "old" DOCSIS 2 modems.

Most people "get the cablemodem for free from their provider". Its possible you live in an area were you own and pay for the modem, much like the DSL guys do. Assuming you purchased it, look for "DOCSIS 3 support" on the shipping box, or just google for your model cablemodem and "docsis3" etc.