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US IPv6 Usage Grows To 3 Million Users

Posted by samzenpus on from the growing-and-growing dept.

darthcamaro writes "There is a myth that IPv6 is only for those in Asia, but that's not true. According to new data discussed this week at an IETF conference, there are more IPv6 users in the U.S. than anywhere else in the world — coming in at 3 million. From the article: 'George Michaelson, senior R&D scientist at APNIC (Asia Pacific Network Information Centre) has a reasonable idea of what the current levels are globally for IPv6 adoption, thanks to some statistical research he has been doing. In his view, IPv6 is now a reality in terms of adoption. "I think you're used to us standing up and saying 'woe is me, woe is me, v6 isn't happening,'" George Michaelson, senior R&D scientist at APNIC (Asia Pacific Network Information Centre) said. "But it is actually happening, these are not trivial numbers of people that are now using IPv6 on a routine basis."'"

9 of 155 comments (clear)

  1. IPV6 on AT&T Residential DSL by arnoldo.j.nunez · · Score: 5, Interesting

    As of June 2012, I noticed I had an IPV6 IP address. The MAC address of my wireless card was used in the actual IPV6 address itself. However, I am not sure what I can really do with this. The IPV6 address is more cumbersome to remember. Can I reasonably expect any tangible benefits as a guy who doesn't really do much IT related activities (i.e. web surfing, email, etc.)?

    1. Re:IPV6 on AT&T Residential DSL by fm6 · · Score: 5, Informative

      Why do you need to remember it at all? I certainly don't have any of my IP addresses memorized. When I need it, I usually end up cutting and pasting.

      The whole point of this DNS thing is that you're not supposed to need to IP address day-to-day. Anything else is sloppy administration.

    2. Re:IPV6 on AT&T Residential DSL by bbn · · Score: 5, Insightful

      The IP address of your gateway is always fe80::%eth0. Like this:

      ~$ ping6 -c1 fe80::%eth0
      PING fe80::%eth0(fe80::) 56 data bytes
      64 bytes from fe80::216:3eff:fe36:5f25: icmp_seq=1 ttl=64 time=0.798 ms

      --- fe80::%eth0 ping statistics ---
      1 packets transmitted, 1 received, 0% packet loss, time 0ms
      rtt min/avg/max/mdev = 0.798/0.798/0.798/0.000 ms

      (slightly different syntax on windows)

      Not that hard eh?

      And nothing stops you from assigning easy to remember addresses to your stuff. In fact since you have little to no constraints, you can make up schemes to your liking. Your webserver could be 2001:db8:531::1. Your decide the ::1 part. You quickly learn that first three parts as it never changes it is "you". The prefix is also usually not any longer than a IPv4 address.

  2. Yet Slashdot remains IPv6 Free by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Slashdot has no IPv6. Boo, hiss. Some nerd website you are.

    host www.slashdot.org
    www.slashdot.org has address 216.34.181.48

    1. Re:Yet Slashdot remains IPv6 Free by artor3 · · Score: 5, Funny

      You mean to tell me that an almost-entirely text site with no unicode support is slow to adopt new standards?!

  3. Verizon 4G by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Informative

    A large portion of the 3 million are probably Verizon 4G devices.

    We had to upgrade one of the software packages we use solely because it logs IP addresses of web site visitors and it was crashing every time someone visited from a Verizon 4G smartphone.

  4. While only ~1% of top websites are IPv6 capable by hackertarget · · Score: 5, Interesting

    I did this analysis of the Alexa Top 1 million before World IPv6 day.
    * 1.1% of sites in the top 1 million had AAAA records
    * Only 4 of the top 50 tech companies websites were IPv6 capable

    http://hackertarget.com/ipv6-in-top-sites-infographic/

    Post World IPv6 day version to be released soon.

  5. The real power of IPv6 by WML+MUNSON · · Score: 5, Insightful

    The real power of IPv6 is that it allows us to eliminate NAT. Because of the size of the IPv6 address pool, every mobile device can have a publicly routable address and thus function as a server.

    Facebook was originally developed and hosted in a college dorm room. With IPv6, the next "big thing" could be developed and hosted in someone's pocket.

  6. Blacklisted IPv4 addresses by sandytaru · · Score: 5, Interesting

    We recently had to move a client over to IPv6 faster than intended because we couldn't get a block of clean IPv4 static addresses from the ISP. That problem is only going to get worse over time.

    --
    Occasionally living proof of the Ballmer peak.