Another Big day for IPv6 - 10% native penetration

Mon Jan 4 16:54:17 UTC 2016

On 04/01/16 16:09, Ca By wrote:
> On Mon, Jan 4, 2016 at 3:26 AM, Neil Harris <neil at tonal.clara.co.uk> wrote:
>
>> On 02/01/16 15:35, Tomas Podermanski wrote:
>>
>>> Hi,
>>>
>>>       according to Google's statistics
>>> (https://www.google.com/intl/en/ipv6/statistics.html) on 31st December
>>> 2015 the IPv6 penetration reached 10% for the very first time. Just a
>>> little reminder. On 20th Nov 2012 the number was 1%. In December we also
>>> celebrated the 20th anniversary of IPv6 standardization - RFC 1883.
>>>
>>> I'm wondering when we reach another significant milestone - 50% :-)
>>>
>>> Tomas
>>>
>>>
>> Given the recent doubling growth, and assuming this trend is following a
>> logistic function, then, rounding the numbers a bit for neatness, I get:
>>
>> Jan 2016: 10%
>> Jan 2017: 20%
>> Jan 2018: 33%
>> Jan 2019: 50%
>> Jan 2020: 67%
>> Jan 2021: 80%
>> Jan 2022: 90%
>>
>> with IPv4 traffic then halving year by year from then on, and IPv4
>> switch-off (ie. traffic < 1%) around 2027.
>>
>> Neil
>>
>>
> Just a reminder, that 10% is a global number.
>
> The number in the USA is 25% today in general, is 37% for mobile devices.
>
> Furthermore, forecasting is a dark art that frequently simply extends the
> past onto the future.  It does not account for purposeful engineering
> design like the "world IPv6 launch" or iOS updates.
>
> For example, once Apple cleanses the app store of IPv4 apps in 2016 as they
> have committed and pushes one of their ubiquitous iOS updates, you may see
> substantial jumps over night in IPv6 eyeballs, possibly meaningful moving
> that 37% number to over 50% in a few shorts weeks.
>
> This will squarely make it clear that IPv4 is minority legacy protocol for
> all of mobile, and thusly the immediate future of the internet.
>
> CB
>

Absolutely. So these figures should be regarded as conservative.

The logistic growth model is just the default model choice for 
predicting new-things-replacing-old transitions. Any number of things 
could make the transition go faster, particularly, as you say, pushes by 
major platform vendors like Apple, and the move to mobile first in the 
expansion of the Internet in the developing world. Companies like search 
engine providers and streaming video providers could also exert pressure 
to speed up the IPv6 transition, if they wished. Also, passing 
psychological thresholds like 50% or 90% -- or even just fashion, in the 
sense of decision makers wanting to be associated with success and the 
future, not the rapidly contracting legacy of the past -- might have an 
effect to accelerate the eventual collapse of IPv4 traffic volumes.

I can only imagine the scale of the schadenfreude IPv6 proponents will 
be able to feel once they're able to start talking about IPv4 as a 
legacy protocol.

Neil