IPv6 has been around for a long time. However, individuals as well as organizations had been rather shy of it and stuck to IPv4. But the statistics from a web high-performance company, Akamai, reveal that IPv6 is finally gaining traction and is experiencing huge amounts of traffic.
The growth of IPv6 traffic during the last year alone has been astonishing. According to Akamai’s research, the IPv6 traffic has exploded by a whopping 900% ever since the June 2011! According to the Chief Architect at Akamai, “The IPv6 preference rate for many dual-stacked sites has been steadily rising by a few percent week-over-week since World IPv6 Launch.”
However, there is still a lot of space for IPv6 growth. For instance, although IPv6 has grown from 0.12% a year ago to 1% in US, this means that there are a lot of users out there who are still using IPv4.
The chief reasons of IPv6’s traffic growth, according to Akamai, are the following:
Availability of content: A major reason for the growth in IPv6 traffic is that many major web giants are now opting for the permanent dual-stacked option – this means that they are enabling support for both IPv4 and IPv6. This includes the likes of Google, Facebook and Yahoo.
IPv6 support from network providers: A lot of network providers are now warming up to IPv6 and are rolling out production IPv6 support to the users. These include AT&T, Verizon Wireless and Comcast as well as a number of Asian and European network providers. Research institutes and educational institutions are also ramping up support for IPv6.
Device Support: Since recently, a number of home routers and gateways didn’t support IPv6. This is changing with time as more and more vendors are producing such products which support IPv6.
Source: Akamai
Courtesy: ZDNet
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