IPv6 not making much progress

IP version 6 is not being adopted as expected, according to a new Internet traffic study conducted by Arbor Networks, a reality which could be severely problematic for Internet expansion, given the limited IP address issues associated with IP version 4, the current generation of Internet technology. In its year-long study, Arbor found IPv6 traffic made up 100^th of one-percent of all Internet traffic.

That picture of IPv6 adoption is based on Arbor’s use of its Deep Packet Inspection technology to do a one-year study of 4 Terabytes per second of anonymized traffic data from 87 ISPs including a cross-section of global Tier 1 ISPs, regional Tier 2 ISPs, large content providers, hosting companies and broadband access providers. The study covered 2,393 peering and backbone routers, along with 278,797 customer and peering interfaces.

“There have been major concerns expressed within the technical community about whether the Internet will transition to IPv6 in time to avoid a digital doomsday,” said Craig Labovitz, chief scientist with Arbor, and author of a blog post predicting IPv4 exhaustion in 900 days. “So we wanted to see if IPv6 is being adopted, and where it is being adopted. The major conclusion at this point is the transition to IPv6 is not so much progressing more slowly than expected, it hasn’t begun for all intents and purposes.”

The result of the slow expansion could be a choking off of the Internet, as Internet addresses become unavailable, a potentially disastrous outcome for the entire industry, particularly at a time when wireless data devices are set to explode in popularity.