IPv6 mistakes, was: Re: Looking for an IPv6 naysayer...

Fri Feb 11 04:52:40 UTC 2011

> As for this "not fixing the problem", IPv4 is going to be a problem
for
> MANY years to come.  IPv6 deployment is glacially slow.  IPv4 being
> "out
> of space" is getting news attention now, but will fade from the
> spotlight
> shortly

I don't know about that.  Yes, v4 will be around for a long time but
considering the oligopolies we have in both eyeball and content
networks, ones a dozen or so very large networks switch, there is the
vast majority of Internet traffic right there.  It will be around for a
very long time handling a tiny bit of traffic.

Facebook alone accounts for 25% of internet traffic in the US. Netflix
is estimated to be over 20% and YouTube at 10%.  So that's 55% of
Internet traffic right there.  At the other end of the transaction you
have AT&T with 15.7 million, Comcast at 15.9 million, Verizon at 9.2
million and Time Warner at 8.9 million (early 2010 numbers).  That's 50
million of the estimated 83 million US broadband subscribers.  So once
three content providers and four subscriber nets switch, that is over
25% of US internet traffic on v6 (more than half the users and more than
half the content they look at).

I don't think the growth of v6 traffic is going to be gradual, I think
it will increase in steps.   You will wake up one morning to find your
v6 traffic doubled and some other morning it will double again.