What is IPv6, and why is adoption taking so long? (2024)

IPv6 has been in the works since 1998 to address the shortfall of IP addresses available under IPv4, yet despite its efficiency and security advantages, enterprise uptake is slow

By Josh Fruhlinger

Contributing writer, Network World |

What is IPv6, and why is adoption taking so long? (2)

For the most part the dire warnings about running out of internet addresses have ceased because, slowly but surely, migration from the world of Internet Protocol Version 4 (IPv4) to IPv6 has begun, and software is in place to prevent the address apocalypse that many were predicting.

But before we see where are and where we’re going with IPv6, let’s go back to the early days of internet addressing.

What is IPv6 and why is it important?

IPv6 is the latest version of the Internet Protocol, which identifies devices across the internet so they can be located. Every device that uses the internet is identified through its own IP address in order for internet communication to work. In that respect, it’s just like the street addresses and zip codes you need to know in order to mail a letter.

The previous version, IPv4, uses a 32-bit addressing scheme to support 4.3 billion devices, which was thought to be enough at the time it was implemented. However, with the growth of the internet, personal computers, smartphones and now Internet of Things, it became clear that the world needed more addresses.

Fortunately, the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) recognized this nearly 25 years ago. In 1998, it created IPv6, which instead uses 128-bit addressing to support approximately 340 trillion trillion (or 2 to the 128th power). Instead of the IPv4 address method of four sets of one- to three-digit numbers, IPv6 uses eight groups of four hexadecimal digits, separated by colons.

What are the benefits of IPv6?

In its work, the IETF not only added more address space, it included enhancements to IPv6 compared with IPv4. The IPv6 protocol can handle packets more efficiently, improve performance and increase security. It enables internet service providers to reduce the size of their routing tables by making them more hierarchical.

What do IPv6 addresses look like

You're probably familiar with IPv4 addresses, which are written in four parts separated by dots like this: 45.48.241.198. Each part written in conventional Base 10 numerals represents an eight-bit binary number from 0 to 255 (000000 to 1111111, written in binary).

An IPv6 address looks like this: 2620:cc:8000:1c82:544c:cc2e:f2fa:5a9b. Instead of four numbers, there are eight, and they’re separated by colons rather than commas. And yes, they are all numbers. There are letters in there because IPv6 addresses are written in hexadecimal (Base 16) notation, which means 16 different symbols are required to uniquely represent the Base 10 numbers 1-16. The ones used are numerals 0-9 plus letters A-F. Each of these numbers represents a 16-bit binary number ranging from 000000000000 to 11111111111111.

Network address translation (NAT) and IPv6

Adoption of IPv6 has been delayed in part due to network address translation (NAT), which takes private IP addresses and turns them into public IP addresses. That way a corporate machine with a private IP address can send and receive packets from machines located outside the private network that have public IP addresses.

Without NAT, large corporations with thousands or tens of thousands of computers would devour enormous quantities of public IPv4 addresses if they wanted to communicate with the outside world. But those IPv4 addresses are limited and nearing exhaustion to the point of having to be rationed.

NAT helps alleviate the problem. With NAT, thousands of privately addressed computers can be presented to the public internet by a NAT machine such as a firewall or router.

The way NAT works is when a corporate computer with a private IP address sends a packet to a public IP address outside the corporate network, it first goes to the NAT device. The NAT notes the packet’s source and destination addresses in a translation table.

The NAT changes the source address of the packet to the public-facing address of the NAT device and sends it along to the external destination. When a packet replies, the NAT translates the destination address to the private IP address of the computer that initiated the communication. This can be done so that a single public IP address can represent multiple privately addressed computers.

Who is deploying IPv6?

As of March 2022, according to Google, the IPv6 adoption rate globally is around 34%, but in the U.S. it’s at about 46%.

Carrier networks and ISPs have been the first group to start deploying IPv6 on their networks, with mobile networks leading the charge. For example, T-Mobile USA has more than 90% of its traffic going over IPv6 as of March 2002, with Verizon Wireless close behind at 82.63%. Comcast and AT&T have their networks at 70% and 73%, respectively, according to the industry group World Ipv6 Launch. The past few years have seen broader IPv6 adoption in Asia and South America, with India currently standing at about 62% and the Indian wireless carrier Reliance Jio Infocomm topping World Ipv6 Launch's network adoption charts with more than 93%.

Just under 30% of the Alexa Top 1000 websites are currently reachable over IPv6, World IPv6 Launch says, a number that has remained stubbornly stagnant over recent years.

Enterprises are trailing in deployment. For instance, a RIPE Labs report on IPv6 adoption noted that U.S. use of IPv6 actually dropped from 2020 to 2021, and speculated that the reason might be that people who had worked at home early in the COVID-19 pandemic were returning to the office and IPv4-based corporate networks.

Complexity, costs, and time needed to complete a transition are all reasons that corporate IT is gun-shy over migration projects. In addition, many medium-sized and small enterprises outsource their networking needs to service providers, who themselves don't have a strong incentive to migrate in the absence of a push from their customers.

When will more deployments occur?

Enterprise resistance to large-scale IPv6 migration is slowing adoption overall. Patrick Hunter, Charter Communications' director of IT enterprise network and telecom, lays out many of the factors in play, noting that while most network administrators know migration is inevitable, nobody wants to necessarily wants to be a pioneer if the risk is causing problems for their own networks and applications.

As he puts it, admins have the attitude of "I’m not going to break things and make life difficult just because some insist everyone should hurry to the new protocol." Not all companies are resisting—Amazon is migrating its serverless and container AWS workloads to IPv6. But inertia, plus the fact that, as noted, widespread NAT use has staved off an IPv4 apocalypse, have reduced the incentives to make the move. The transition may not be complete until 2030 or later.

Nevertheless, as the price of IPv4 addresses begin to drop, the Internet Society suggests that enterprises sell off their existing IPv4 addresses to help fund IPv6 deployment. The Massachusetts Institute of Technology has done this, according to a note posted on GitHub. The university concluded that 8 million of its IPv4 addresses were “excess” and could be sold without impacting current or future needs since it also holds 20 nonillion IPv6 addresses. (A nonillion is the numeral one followed by 30 zeroes.)

In addition, as more deployments occur, more companies will start charging for the use of IPv4 addresses, while providing IPv6 services for free. UK-based ISP Mythic Beasts says “IPv6 connectivity comes as standard,” while “IPv4 connectivity is an optional extra.”

Pushing for a faster transition will take government action, though many Western governments don't have this on their to-do list. One country moving to IPv6 in a big way is China. In 2021, the Cyberspace Administration of China unveiled an ambitious roadmap, aiming to have 800 million active IPv6 users by the end of 2025.

When will IPv4 be “shut off”?

Most of the world “ran out” of new IPv4 addresses between 2011 and 2018 – but we won’t completely be out of them as IPv4 addresses get sold and re-used, and any leftover addresses will be used for IPv6 transitions.

There’s no official switch-off date, so people shouldn’t be worried that their internet access will suddenly go away one day. As more networks transition, more content sites support IPv6 and more end users upgrade their equipment for IPv6 capabilities, the world will slowly move away from IPv4.

Why is there no IPv5?

There was an IPv5 that was also known as Internet Stream Protocol, abbreviated simply as ST. It was designed for connection-oriented communications across IP networks with the intent of supporting voice and video.

It was successful at that task, and was used experimentally. One shortcoming that undermined its popular use was its 32-bit address scheme – the same scheme used by IPv4. As a result, it had the same problem that IPv4 had – a limited number of possible IP addresses. That led to the development and eventual adoption of IPv6. Even though IPv5 was never adopted publicly, it had used up the name IPv5.

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Josh Fruhlinger is a writer and editor who lives in Los Angeles.

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What is IPv6, and why is adoption taking so long? (2024)

FAQs

Why has it taken so long for IPv6 to be adopted? ›

Adoption of IPv6 has been delayed in part due to network address translation (NAT), which takes private IP addresses and turns them into public IP addresses.

What is IPv6 and why is it necessary? ›

IPv6 is the “next generation” of IP, which provides a vastly expanded address space. Using IPv6, the Internet will be able to grow to millions of times its current size, in terms of the numbers of people, devices and objects connected to it1.

What is IPv6 in networking? ›

An IPv6 address is a 128-bit alphanumeric value that identifies an endpoint device in an Internet Protocol Version 6 (IPv6) network. IPv6 is the successor to a previous addressing infrastructure, IPv4, which had limitations IPv6 was designed to overcome.

When was IPv6 adopted? ›

History of Internet Protocol version 6

IPv6 was first introduced in 1995 by the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) to address IPv4 exhaustion caused by the global expansion of networks. IPv6 is, arguably, superior to IPv4, a version that can offer an extremely limited number of IP addresses – around 4.29 billion.

How long is a IPv6 address? ›

An IPv6 address is 128 bits in length and consists of eight, 16-bit fields, with each field bounded by a colon. Each field must contain a hexadecimal number, in contrast to the dotted-decimal notation of IPv4 addresses.

Is IPv6 really faster? ›

In general, there's no major difference between IPv4 vs IPv6 speeds, though some evidence does suggest that IPv6 might be slightly faster in some situations.

What is IPv6 simple definition? ›

IPv6 (Internet Protocol version 6) is a set of specifications from the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) that is essentially an upgrade of IP version 4 (IPv4), a category of IP addresses in IPv4-based routing.

What is an IPv6 address and why are they necessary quizlet? ›

An IPv6 address is a 128-bit binary number assigned to a computer on a TCP/IP network. Some of the bits in the address represent the network segment; the other bits represent the host itself. IPv6 addresses are not case-sensitive. Global addresses Globally routable public addresses.

What is IPv6 and its types? ›

The three types of IPv6 addresses are: unicast, anycast, and multicast. Unicast addresses identify a single interface. Anycast addresses identify a set of interfaces in such a way that a packet sent to an anycast address is delivered to a member of the set.

What is IPv6 address example? ›

An IPv6 address is represented as eight groups of four hexadecimal digits, each group representing 16 bits The groups are separated by colons (:). An example of an IPv6 address is: 2001:0db8:85a3:0000:0000:8a2e:0370:7334.

How many IPv6 addresses are left? ›

The main advantage of IPv6 over IPv4 is its larger address space. The size of an IPv6 address is 128 bits, compared to 32 bits in IPv4. The address space therefore has 2128=340,282,366,920,938,463,463,374,607,431,768,211,456 addresses (approximately 3.4×1038).

How many IPv6 addresses are there per person? ›

The very large IPv6 address space supports a total of 2128 (about 3.4×1038) addresses – or approximately 5×1028 (roughly 295) addresses for each of the roughly 6.5 billion (6.5×109) people alive today. In a different perspective, this is 252 addresses for every observable star in the known universe.

Is IPv6 the best? ›

The Internet Protocol version 6 (IPv6) is more advanced and has better features compared to IPv4. It has the capability to provide an infinite number of addresses. It is replacing IPv4 to accommodate the growing number of networks worldwide and help solve the IP address exhaustion problem.

Are there advantages to IPv6? ›

Key benefits to IPv6 include: No more NAT (Network Address Translation) Auto-configuration. No more private address collisions.

Why is IPv6 preferred? ›

IPv6 (Internet Protocol version 6) is the next version after IPv4. Instead of the 32 bits used by IPv4 for addressing, IPv6 uses 128 bits for the same purpose - which theoretically makes it possible to assign 2 128 addresses - hence, it offers long term solutions to most of the problems that emerged while using IPv4.

What is another name for IPv6? ›

Another common name for IPv6 is IPng (Internet Protocol next generation). Unlike its predecessor, IPv6 uses 128-bit hexadecimal IP addresses.

What are some reasons IPv6 is important for the Internet of things? ›

IPv6 is capable of sending large data packets simultaneously to conserve bandwidth. With the help of fast transmission of data due to IPv6 In IoT, devices used in IoT will also be able to interact with each other. IPv6 provides far better security than IPv4.

What are three important features of IPv6? ›

It offers the following features:
  • Larger Address Space. In contrast to IPv4, IPv6 uses 4 times more bits to address a device on the Internet. ...
  • Simplified Header. ...
  • End-to-end Connectivity. ...
  • Auto-configuration. ...
  • Faster Forwarding/Routing. ...
  • IPSec. ...
  • No Broadcast. ...
  • Anycast Support.

What is the structure of IPv6? ›

An IPv6 address is 128 bits in length and consists of eight, 16-bit fields, with each field bounded by a colon. Each field must contain a hexadecimal number, in contrast to the dotted-decimal notation of IPv4 addresses.

What is IPv6 should it be on or off? ›

Internet Protocol version 6 (IPv6) is a mandatory part of Windows Vista and Windows Server 2008 and newer versions. We do not recommend that you disable IPv6 or its components. If you do, some Windows components may not function. We recommend using Prefer IPv4 over IPv6 in prefix policies instead of disabling IPV6.

Is IPv6 address necessary? ›

Do I need an IPv6 address? No. Not right now. You can still access websites such as Google and Facebook because they support both IPv4 and IPv6.

Should I turn IPv6 on or off on the router? ›

Some users disable IPv6 on routers or devices because they don't run any applications or services that rely on IPv6. Disabling IPv6 is also common when troubleshooting network issues. However, service providers discourage users from disabling IPv6 and warn that it may cause connectivity problems.

Should I enable IPv6 or not? ›

When possible, it is better to keep both IPv4 and IPv6 addresses enabled. For example, using only IPv6 can cause some accessibility issues, as only about one third of the internet supports IPv6 addresses. Likewise, disabling IPv6 can cause certain problems, especially if your router is already using an IPv6 address.

What is special about IPv6? ›

Larger address space. The main advantage of IPv6 over IPv4 is its larger address space. The size of an IPv6 address is 128 bits, compared to 32 bits in IPv4. The address space therefore has 2128=340,282,366,920,938,463,463,374,607,431,768,211,456 addresses (approximately 3.4×1038).

What are three benefits of using IPv6? ›

IPv6 is the IP address format that was designed to supplement IPv4.
  • Comparing IPv6 to IPv4. IPv4 is a 32-Bit IP address whereas IPv6 is a 128-Bit IP address. ...
  • Simpler header format. ...
  • More efficient routing. ...
  • More security. ...
  • True Quality of Service. ...
  • Easier file-sharing. ...
  • No more NAT (Network Address Translation)
27 Jul 2020

What are the four benefits of IPv6? ›

Six Benefits Of IPv6
  • More Efficient Routing. IPv6 reduces the size of routing tables and makes routing more efficient and hierarchical. ...
  • More Efficient Packet Processing. ...
  • Directed Data Flows. ...
  • Simplified Network Configuration. ...
  • Support For New Services. ...
  • Security.
8 Jun 2011

Who uses IPv6 address? ›

Broadband ISP
RankISPIPv6 Users (estimated)
1Reliance Jio237,600,764
2Comcast36,114,435
3AT&T22,305,974
4Vodafone India18,368,165
14 more rows
6 Jun 2018

What is an example of an IPv6 address? ›

An IPv6 address is represented as eight groups of four hexadecimal digits, each group representing 16 bits The groups are separated by colons (:). An example of an IPv6 address is: 2001:0db8:85a3:0000:0000:8a2e:0370:7334.

How many IPv6 are there? ›

IPv6 uses 128-bit (2128) addresses, allowing 3.4 x 1038 unique IP addresses. This is equal to 340 trillion trillion trillion IP addresses.

Why do people disable IPv6? ›

Summary. It is common for IT administrators to disable IPv6 to troubleshoot networking-related issues such as name resolution issues. Internet Protocol version 6 (IPv6) is a mandatory part of Windows Vista and Windows Server 2008 and newer versions.

Does IPv6 slow down WIFI? ›

If you have IPV6 turned on, DNS lookups are 2 to 3 times slower than with IPV4. That's why it seems as if your computer has "trouble connecting" to web sites. When you initiate a connection to any site, the first thing it does is look up the IP address in DNS. DNS lookups are slow on IPV6 for several reasons.

Does IPv6 make WIFI faster? ›

An IPv6 address has extended headers four times larger than IPv4 addresses. This added feature in the IPv6 address helps reduce the overhead of packet processing and header bandwidth, making the connection much faster.

Why is IPV6 never used? ›

Perhaps the primary reason IPv6 has been slow to take hold is because of network address translation (NAT), which has the ability to take a collection of private IP addresses and make them public.

What are the disadvantages of using IPV6? ›

Disadvantages of IPV6:
  • Creating a smooth transition from IPV4 to IPV6.
  • IPV6 is not available to machines that run IPV4.
  • Time to convert over to IPV6.
  • IPV4 is still widely used & the world is slow to convert to IPV6.
  • Any costs incurred by the user as a result of having to replace an IPV4 machine.

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