Big day for IPv6 - 1% native penetration

Mon Nov 26 20:37:45 UTC 2012

On Nov 26, 2012, at 04:57 , "Dobbins, Roland" <rdobbins at arbor.net> wrote:

> 
> On Nov 26, 2012, at 7:10 PM, Arturo Servin wrote:
> 
>> 	Users do not care and they will never have a "deliberate migration".
> 
> I understand this.  However, the way that IPv6 migration is discussed in most contexts seems to be predicated upon the notion that there is some industry imperative to light up network with IPv6.  My point is that there is not.

There is, actually.

The fact that more users are constantly connecting more devices creates an industry imperative to light up a larger address space. CGN does not scale and cannot scale. At best, it's a hack that might allow us to cope with a few years of transition while there are still devices in homes that are IPv4-only, but it certainly doesn't reduce or remove the imperative.

Any ISP that fails to light up its customers with IPv6 in the next 3 years is at serious risk of having its customers notice that they are no longer connected to the entire internet.

Since 2011, IPv4 has been becoming a progressively smaller fraction of the internet. Today, that progression is very slow and it's still north of 99%. However, there is notable acceleration and given the rate of internet growth, within 5 years, I suspect that even if everything that is currently IPv4 remains IPv4 and all new services are still deployed with IPv4 in addition to IPv6, less than 60% of the internet will still be IPv4 at that time.

>> IMHO if the user choose to change or not it is the least important, the real important fact is that IPv6 is taking up no matter if it is or not deliberate used by the users.
> 
> I disagree somewhat with this view.  The significant question is whether the users are actually accessing apps/services/content via IPv6, or if it's essentially white noise.

Really, this isn't the important question, either.

The important question is what is the rate of growth of the ability of users to access content/apps/services via IPv6?
Further, what is the rate of growth in the provision of content/apps/services on dual-stack vs. IPv4-only?
Later, the important question will become what fraction of users can still access the IPv4 internet through <2 layers of NAT?

As I said, at current growth rates, by q4 2017, that final figure will be less than 60%.

If you don't think that the need to sustain the growth in the number of devices attached to the network (never mind the number of things causing that rate to accelerate[1]) makes IPv6 inevitable at this point, you really aren't paying attention.

Owen

[1] Things causing growth in the rate of internet attachment:
	IPv6-enabled light bulbs and other small appliances/sensors/etc.
	Smart-Grid/Smart-Meters
	Environmental Monitoring Sensor Arrays (things like projects to deploy literally millions of sensors in the oceans)
	Various 6lowpan based projects
	The eventual migration of what is currently Zigbee towards 6lowpan (OK, this one might be questionable, but it's certainly
		better for everyone except the Zigbee licensing folks if it goes that way)
	Public Safety applications (think telemetry-enabled ambulances)
	Bio-sensors (think remote patient monitoring, IPv6-enabled pace-makers and automatic-internal-defibrulators, etc.)
	Home automation
	Applications we haven't even thought of yet