IPv4 Crisis Motivates IPv6 Adoption, APNIC Head Says; Europe Leading Next-Gen Charge (For the Most Part)
Host Virtual recognizes the importance of IPv6 for the future of the internet. We offer a dual IPv4 and IPv6 stack for our customers, which we develop and maintain in-house. Additional IPv6 addresses are also free of charge for all customers. This ensures that we and our customers will be able to serve the needs of down the road while being able to continue to work with the millions of version 4 addresses that are still in use.
With IPv4 on its last legs and usage of its follow-on protocol winding up, this is our roundup of the latest news about IPv6.
During the ICANN 50 meeting held late last this summer in London, the head of at the Asia Pacific Network Information Center (APNIC), Paul Wilson, called for stakeholders in the internet and connected devices to move on from IPv4 and adopt IPv6 without delay.
According to the group, usage of IPv6 addresses have gone up 1 percent for a total of 3.5 percent. While this growth seems modest, it is the beginning of the adoption needed to ensure that the dwindling supply of IPv4 blocks are replaced with IPv6 usage. This will last devices and internet services with addresses for decades, if not centuries, to come.
“After many years of speculation as to when we’d really see true healthy growth, we’re seeing it now,” Wilson told PC World.
Though the end of IPv4 has been planned and managed, the roll-out of IPv6 has not taken off as quickly as the overseers of the internet hoped. The exhaustion of IPv4 addresses is imminent, with underused and unused blocks now being bought and sold between regional internet registries. ISPs are also implementing carrier-grade NATs, but Wilson describes these solutions as dead-end fixes. However, the last-minute clamor for IPv4 is giving the industry a reason to move to IPv6 at once, which Wilson said, is “the best chemistry for a successful transition.”
Traffic figures released in content delivery network Akamai Technologies’ “State of the Internet” report for the first quarter of 2014 found that European nations are leading the way in IPv6 usage. However, curiously absent from this list is the UK.
Belgium leads the with world 14 percent of its traffic utilizing version 6, which is 200 percent quarter-on-quarter growth. In addition, Switzerland (9.3 percent), Germany (7.7 percent), Luxembourg (7.4 percent) and Romania (7.3 percent) are ahead of the US (6.2 percent). But strangely, the UK doesn’t even make the top 10.
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