Internet Protocol Version 6 (IPv6) is the next generation of the Internet Protocol that is in various stages of deployment on the Internet. It was designed as a replacement for the IPv4 address system, which had been in use since 1982, and which was exhausted in 2011. The rollout of IPv6 addresses commenced in mid-2000s and is ongoing.
As of December 2016, Google's statistics show IPv6 availability of approximately 12% amongst its users. It is used more on weekends and adoption is uneven across countries and Internet service providers.
In November 2016, 1491 (98.2%) of the 1519 top-level domains (TLDs) in the Internet supported IPv6 to access their domain name servers, and 1485 (97.8%) zones contained IPv6 glue records, and approximately 9.0 million domains (4.6%) had IPv6 address records in their zones. Of all networks in the global BGP routing table, 29.2% had IPv6 protocol support.
By 2011, all major operating systems in use on personal computers and server systems had production-quality IPv6 implementations. Cellular telephone systems present a large deployment field for Internet Protocol devices as mobile telephone service is making the transition from 3G to "next-generation" 4G technologies, in which voice is provisioned as a Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) service. This mandates the use of IPv6 for such networks. In 2009 U.S. cellular operator Verizon released technical specifications for devices to operate on its "next-generation" networks. The specification mandates IPv6 operation according to the 3GPP Release 8 Specifications (March 2009), and deprecates IPv4 as an optional capability.
In the early 2000s, governments increasingly required support for IPv6 in new equipment. The U.S. government, for example, specified in 2005 that the network backbones of all federal agencies had to be upgraded to IPv6 by June 30, 2008; this was completed before the deadline. The government of the People's Republic of China implemented a five-year plan for deployment of IPv6 called the China Next Generation Internet (see below).
Major providers of Internet services, both ISPs and content providers, also began to implement IPv6 access into their products.
Google publishes statistics on IPv6 adoption among Google users. A graph of IPv6 adoption since 2008 and a map of IPv6 deployment by country are available.
Akamai publishes by-country and by-network statistics on IPv6 adoption for traffic it sees on its global Content Distribution Network (CDN). This set of data also shows graphs for each country and network over time.
A global view into the growing IPv6 routing tables can be obtained with the SixXS Ghost Route Hunter. This tool provides a list of all allocated IPv6 prefixes and marks with colors the ones that are actually being announced into the Internet BGP tables. When a prefix is announced, it means that the ISP at least can receive IPv6 packets for their prefix.
The integration of IPv6 on existing network infrastructures current at any time can also be monitored from other sources, for example:
Regional Internet Registries (RIR) IPv6 Prefix Allocation
IPv6 Transit services
Japan ISP IPv6 services
IPv6 testing, evaluation, and certification
A few organizations are involved with international IPv6 test and evaluation, ranging from the United States Department of Defense to the University of New Hampshire.
The US DoD Joint Interoperability Test Command DoD IPv6 Product Certification Program
University of New Hampshire InterOperability Laboratory involvement in the IPv6 Ready Logo Program
SATSIX
By 2011, all major operating systems in use on personal computers and server systems had production-quality IPv6 implementations. Microsoft Windows has supported IPv6 since Windows 2000, and in production-ready state beginning with Windows XP. Windows Vista and later have improved IPv6 support. Mac OS X since Panther (10.3), Linux 2.6, FreeBSD, and Solaris also have mature production implementations. Some implementations of the BitTorrent peer-to-peer file transfer protocol make use of IPv6 to avoid NAT issues common for IPv4 private networks.
AnwarNet (www.anwarnet.dz); AfriNIC has allocated range of IPv6 address space to AnwarNet. AnwarNet started IPV6 services in 2011.
AARNet completed network AARNet 3, a high-speed network connecting academic and research customers in the major metropolitan centres, with international links to major ISPs in the US, Asia, and Europe. One of the design goals was to support both IPv4 and IPv6 protocols equally. It also supports multicast routing and jumbo frames.
IPv6 Now Pty Ltd introduced the first commercial-grade IPv6 tunnel broker service in Australia on April 30, 2008. Also, in June 2008, IPv6Now introduced the first dual stacked (IPv4 & IPv6) web hosting service.
Internode is the first commercial ISP in Australia to have full IPv6 connectivity and make IPv6 available to customers. The availability to customers was officially announced to Whirlpool on July 18, 2008.
The Victorian State Government granted A$350,000 to establish an IPv6 testbed network (VIC6) freely available to industry to evaluate their IPv6 products and strategies.
Telstra announced on 5 September 2011 that their backbone network was fully double-stacked and that they had commenced providing its enterprise, government and wholesale customers with IPv6 connectivity, and helping customers through the transition.
Telstra activates IPv6 addressing for mobile network
On July 13, 2010, Logica Netherlands (operating within the SPITS project in cooperation with Mobistar Belgium) successfully tested native IPv6 over UMTS/GPRS in Belgium and the Netherlands within a vehicle platform as an Intelligent transportation system solution. The test was performed both in gsm and in tethering mode using a Nokia smart-phone.
Since September 2013, research and government ISP Belnet offers native IPV6 to all customers.
VOO A large residential ISP (cable) started its transition in April 2013 leading to impressive growth in IPv6 in Belgium
Telenet started its transition in February 2014, helping to push the Belgian average of IPv6 usage to almost 30% by September 2014 and putting them in the top 10 of worldwide ISPs of which customers are visiting websites with IPv6.
As of July 2016, penetration is 59% according to Apnic.
has constructed a research center to study the possibilities of adopting IPv6 in the country. The center will operate alongside another facility, which is equipped with an IBM Blue Gene/P supercomputer.
At the end of 2016, the ISP ComNet Bulgaria Holding Ltd. has provided complete IPv6 support for all customers and households within company network in Bulgaria.
IPv6 deployment is slow but ongoing, with major Canadian ISPs (notably Shaw Communications, Bell Canada, Vidéotron, and Cogeco) lacking in support for its residential customers, and the majority of their business customers (including server packages). Canadian IPv6 usage jumped from 0.5% in July 2015 to 7% in Dec 2015 due to IPv6 deployment at Telus.
According to Google's statistics, Canada has reached an IPv6 adoption rate of 16% by December 2016.
Rogers has deployed native IPv6 on network wide, including their DOCSIS 3.0/3.1 wireline broadband network and their HSPA/LTE mobile network.
Fibrenoire, a Canadian Metro Ethernet fibre network operating in Quebec and Ontario, has been providing native IPv6 connectivity since 2009.
Peer 1 has provided IPv6 backbones to Canadian data centres since 2011, as well as in its peering centers.
TekSavvy has deployed its own IPv6 network to its customers on DSL in Alberta, British Columbia, Ontario, and Quebec.
Vidéotron has deployed their own IPv6 network to customers as a beta service.
SaskTel has deployed IPv6 support for business customers subscribing to their Dedicated Internet or LANSpan IP product.
Telus has deployed IPv6 support for business services and residential customers with 44% IPv6 usage in December 2015 according to World IPv6 Launch measurements
Origen Telecom is a Canadian internet service provider operating in Montreal and Toronto, and supports IPv6 connectivity for its business clients.
Belair Technologies Operating in Montreal, Laval and surrounding area as well as Cornwall and Toronto, and fully supports IPv6 connectivity for all its clients.
The China Next Generation Internet (CNGI, 中国下一代互联网) project is a five-year plan initiated by the Chinese government with the purpose of gaining a significant position in the development of the Internet through the early adoption of IPv6. China showcased CNGI's IPv6 infrastructure during the 2008 Summer Olympic Games, being the first time a major world event has had a presence on the IPv6 Internet. At the time of the event, it was believed that the Olympics provided the largest showcase of IPv6 technology since the inception of IPv6. The deployment of IPv6 was widespread in all related applications, from data networking and camera transmissions for sporting events, to civil applications, such as security cameras and taxis. The events were streamed live over the Internet and networked cars were able to monitor traffic conditions readily, all network operations of the Games being conducted using IPv6.
Also, the CERNET (China Education and Research NETwork, 中国教育和科研计算机网, 教育网) set up native IPv6 (CERNET2), and since then many academic institutions in China joined CERNET2 for IPv6 connectivity. CERNET-2 is probably the widest deployment of IPv6 in China. It is managed and operated jointly by 25 universities. Students in Shanghai Jiao Tong University and Beijing University of Posts and Telecommunications, for example, get native IPv6.
As of December 2016, the country has only 2% IPv6 traffic (according to both Google and Apnic stats).
A web page (in Danish) follows national IPv6 deployment.
The ISP Fullrate has begun offering IPv6 to its customers, on the condition that their router (provided by the ISP itself) is compatible. If the router is of a different version, the customer has to request a new router.
Elion (now known as Estonian Telekom) is providing native IPv6 access on residential and business broadband connections since September 2014. As a limiting factor, only last-generation Customer-premises equipment (CPE) supports IPv6 requiring users to swap CPE.
Finland
FICORA (Finnish Communications Regulatory Authority), the NIC for the .fi top level domain, has added IPv6 address to DNS servers, and allows entering IPv6 address when registering domains. The registration service domain.fi for new domains is also available over IPv6.
Nebula, a Finnish ISP offers IPv6 access since 2007
According to Google's statistics, Finland has reached an IPv6 adoption rate of 12% by December 2016.
AFNIC, the NIC for (among others) the .fr Top Level Domain, has implemented IPv6 operations.
Renater, the French national academical network, is offering IPv6 connectivity including multicast support to their members.
Free, a major French ISP, rolled-out IPv6 as an opt-in at end of year 2007.
Nerim, a small ISP, provides native IPv6 for all its clients since March 2003.
Orange (formerly France Telecom), a major ISP, is currently rolling out IPv6 on its wired network. ETA Q2 2016 for FTTH and VDSL, 2017 for ADSL
OVH has implemented IPv6.
FDN, a small associative ISP, has been providing native IPv6 since November 2008.
SFR, a major ISP, rolled out IPv6 as an opt-in on its wired network.
Bouygues Telecom plans deployment for 2017.
As of December 2016, France has 13% IPv6 traffic (according to both Google and Apnic stats).
The DFN backbone network offers full native IPv6 support for their participants. Many scientific networks in Germany, like the Munich Scientific Network (MWN) operated by Leibniz-Rechenzentrum, are connected to this network.
Deutsche Telekom started rolling out IPv6 for new All-IP T-DSL customers in September 2012. The overall deployment rate was 22% by 31 December 2014.
Deutsche Telekom starts IPv6 (dualstack) in their mobile network in August 2015
Kabel Deutschland (Vodafone) and Unitymedia KabelBW offer native IPv6 to their new customers.
M-net, a regional carrier and ISP, offers native IPv6 for their customers.
Regional carrier and ISP NetCologne has begun offering native IPv6 to its customers
Primacom offers IPv6 for their customers.
Tele Columbus started to offer IPv6 since end of 2014.
Fl!nk a relatively new provider using Deutsche Glasfaser offer native(but via 6rd) ipv6 and CGN ipv4 to its customers.
Deutsche Telekom and Apple (iOS 9.3, March 2016) changed the operator settings for iPhone and iPad to prefer IPv6
According to Google's statistics, Germany has reached an IPv6 adoption rate of 26% by December 2016.
In Hungary Externet was the first ISP starting deploying IPv6 on its network in 2008 August. The service was commercially available since 2009 May.
Magyar Telekom was running tests on its production environments since the beginning of 2009. Free customer trials started on November 2, 2009, for those on ADSL or Fiber Optic. Customers are given a /128 via DHCP-ND unless they register their DUID in which case they receive a /56 - using a static configuration results in a single /64.
According to information on telecompaper.com, UPC Hungary will start deploying IPv6 in mid-2013, finishing it in 2013.
In 2015 December RCS&RDS (Digi) has enabled native dual stack IPv6(customers receive dynamic /64 prefixes) for its FTTB/H customers. In november the same year UPC hungary intruduced DS Lite(with private IPv4 addresses) which can be enabled on a customer-to-customer basis if the customer asks for it.
Magyar Telekom deployed dual stack IPv6 (using dynamic /56 prefixes on DSL and GPON and static /56 prefixes on DOCSIS) for all of its wired (and for all of its compatible mobile) customers in 2016 october.
According to the statistics of APNIC, IPv6 use in Hungary as of 2016 November has reached around 8%.
According to Google's IPv6 statistics the adoption rate at 2016 November was 7%.
Department of Telecommunications, of Government of India has run workshops on IPv6 on 13 February 2015 at Silvassa & on 11 February 2015, at DoT headquarters,New Delhi.They have also released roadmaps on IPv6 deployment.
Sify Technologies Limited, a private Internet service provider, rolled out IPv6 in 2005. Sify has a dual-stack network that supports commercial services on IPv6 transport for its enterprise customers. Sify is a sponsored member of 6Choice, a project by India-Europe cooperation to promote IPv6 adoption. Sify is the first to launch a dual-stack commercial portal http://sify.com.
ERNET - The Indian Education and Research Network, Department of Electronics & IT, Government of India is providing dual stack networks from 2006 onwards and has been part of many EU funded initiative such as 6Choice, 6lowpan, Myfire, GEANT etc. ERNET's own websites and those hosted of other organisations are all running on dual stack. ERNET provides Consultancy and Turnkey project Implementation to organisations migrating to IPv6 along with fulfilling their Training needs. ERNET has an IPv6 central facility aimed at system and network administrators to provide hands-on training in the use and configuration of web, mail, proxy, DNS and other such servers on IPv6 spearheaded by Praveen Misra, an IPv6 evangelist. Refer www.ipv6.ernet.in
Reliance JIO has deployed and is offering IPv6 services in India.
According to Google's statistics, India has reached an IPv6 adoption rate of 9% by December 2016.
Telecommunications company NTT announces itself as the world's first ISP to offer public availability of IPv6 services in March 2000.
According to Google's statistics, Japan has reached an IPv6 adoption rate of 14% by December 2016.
The LITNET academic & research network has supported IPv6 since 2001.
Most commercial ISPs have not publicly deployed IPv6 yet.
RESTENA, the national research and education network, has been running IPv6 for a number of years. It is connected to the European GEANT2 network. In addition, it runs one of the country Internet exchanges, which supports IPv6 peering. RESTENA also runs the .lu top level domain, which also supports IPv6.
P&T Luxembourg, main telecom and Internet service providers, has announced they have production quality IPv6 connectivity since January 2009, with the first professional customers being connected as of September 2009. Deployment of IPv6 to residential customers is expected to take place in 2010.
According to Google's statistics, Luxembourg has reached an IPv6 adoption rate of 21% by December 2016.
Netherlands
SURFnet, maintainer of the Dutch academical network SURFnet, introduced IPv6 to its network 1997, in the beginning using IPv6-to-IPv4 tunnels. Its backbone is entirely running dual-stack, supporting both native IPv4 and IPv6 to most of its users.
XS4All is a major Dutch ISP. In 2002 XS4All was the first Dutch broadband provider to introduce IPv6 to its network, but it has only been experimental. In May 2009 the provider provided the first native IPv6 DSL connections. As of August 2010 native IPv6 DSL connections became available to almost all their customers. Since June 2012 native IPv6 is enabled by default for all new customers.
Business-orientated Internet provider BIT BV has been providing IPv6 to all their customers (DSL, FTTH, colocated) since 2004.
SixXS has two private Dutch founders and has been partnering with IPv6 Internet service providers in many countries to provide IPv6 connectivity via IP tunnels to users worldwide since 2000. It started out as IPng.nl with a predominantly Dutch user base and reorganized as SixXS to be able to reach users internationally and be diversified in ISP support. SixXS also provides various other related services and software which contributed significantly to IPv6 adoption and operation globally.
Business ISP Introweb provides an IPv6-only 8 Mbit/s ADSL connection for 6 euro per month to 100 customers as a pilot, both for companies to learn how to adapt to IPv6 as for themselves in working on a fully IPv6 enabled network.
Signet is the first ISP in the country which provides IPv6 connectivity together with IPv4 on multiple national fiber networks (Eurofiber, Glasvezel Eindhoven, BRE, Glasnet Veghel, Ziggo, and Fiber Port).
Most Dutch hosting companies, including the biggest one, Leaseweb, support IPv6, but customers by default get only IPv4 address.
Several government sites (such as Rijksoverheid.nl) are available via IPv6.
On July 13. 2010, native IPv6 over UMTS/GPRS was successfully tested in Belgium and The Netherlands within a vehicle platform as an Intelligent transportation system solution. The test was performed both in gsm and in tethering mode using a Nokia smart-phone. This test was performed by Logica Netherlands within the SPITS project, in cooperation with Mobistar Belgium.
New Zealand
As of 2012, surveys conducted by the New Zealand IPv6 Task Force indicated that awareness of IPv6 had reached a near-universal level among New Zealand's large public- and private-sector organisations, with adoption mostly occurring as part of normal network refresh cycles. Most of New Zealand's ISP and carrier community have a test environment for IPv6 and many have started bringing IPv6 products and services on-stream. An increasing number of New Zealand Government websites are available over IPv6, including those of the Ministry of Defence (New Zealand), Ministry for Primary Industries (New Zealand), Ministry of Social Development and the Department of Internal Affairs.
Massey University has enabled IPv6 on its border and core campus routers. Its central network services, including DNS, external email and NTP are also enabled. Massey's main website is IPv6-enabled and remote login to some servers and network equipment also support IPv6 for systems administration and networking staff.
IPv6 has been enabled on 15 websites hosted at Tauranga City Council (TCC). Changes to equipment on the Council’s internal LAN have also been made to enable IPV6. Some internal networks across the organisation have been enabled for IPv6, and dual-stack technology is being used to enable both IPv4 and IPv6 use. A number of internal servers and client devices communicate via IPv6, and a teredo relay and 6to4 relay ensure users using these two transition technologies are well served when accessing IPV6 addresses.
The University of Auckland IT Services team has partially deployed IPv6, in collaboration with the Science Faculty and the Computer Science Department. It has IPv6 connectivity via KAREN and its commercial ISP. Computer Science is fully dual-stacked; IPv6 has been used in undergraduate laboratory assignments and for post-graduate projects.
KAREN, New Zealand’s R&E network, is an IPv6 native network and has provided IPv6 as a standard service offering to its members since 2006.
Auckland-based ISP WorldxChange Communications has had dual-stack since 2008. It has started providing residential customers with dual (IPv4 and IPv6) service using DHCPv6, on a trial basis.
Government Technology Services, a business group of the Department of Internal Affairs (DIA), has an IPv6 website as a proof of concept to demonstrate how New Zealand government websites can be made accessible to the IPv6 Internet. Government Technology Services has also set up an IPv6 address schema.
South Island-based Internet Service Provider Snap Internet provides native IPv6 connectivity for all its customers. Its network is fully IPv6-enabled, with the IPv6 service running alongside Snap’s normal IPv4 connectivity.
Palmerston North-based ISP Inspire Net has had native IPv6 transit since late-2009.
Internet Service Provider DTS's transit, managed and hosting services are fully IPv6 capable.
Trans-Tasman service provider Vocus Communications offers full dual-stack IP transit services and also supports IPv6 transport on its private IP WAN service in NZ.
The government is in process of upgrading its facilities. Globe Telecom has already set in motion the transition of its core IP network to IPv6, noting that it is now fully prepared even as the Internet runs out of IPv4 addresses. Globe claims it is the first local telecommunication company to test IPv6 with Department of Science and Technology (Philippines). In some cases, like test networks or users, IPv6 or both maybe present.
Poland
The Polish national research and education network began an IPv6 trial period in 2002. As for now native IPv6 connectivity is available to numerous educational and private clients connected via citywide networks operated by local universities.
Polish Internet Exchange, a commercial and carrier-neutral Internet traffic exchange point, has facilitated IPv6 peering between numerous operators since 2008.
Orange Polska - (mobile operator) March 2013 launched mobile access to the Internet via IPv6 protocol for their subscribers. On September 2013, Sony Xperia Z1 became the first IPv6 compliant device commercially available in Orange Poland.
As of June 2012, the ISP named RCS&RDS offers dual stack IPv4/IPv6 PPPoE services to current home users using modern versions of Microsoft Windows, Mac OS X, Linux and other IPv6-ready devices. More than 1 million RCS & RDS residential customers can now use native IPv6 on a dual stack PPPoE connection and 16% already do.
ER-Telecom offers native IPv6 to customers since 10.10.2013 using PPPoE Dual-Stack and DHCPv6 Prefix Delegation
The Sudanese IPv6 task Force SDv6TF was formed in 2010 to fellow the implementation of IPv6 migration plan (2011-2015).
By November 2012, all telecom operators are becoming IPv6 enabled, this wast tested for the first time at the AFRINIC-17 meeting held in Khartoum.
SudREN (Sudanese Research and Education Network) is the first ISP to provide native IPv6 connectivity of the member institution. By August 2014, SudREN.edu.sd is fully IPv6 Enabled. Two certification received from IPv6 Forum, for WWW and ISP Enabled Logos.
Bahnhof offers IPv6 to businesses.
Tele2 have begun IPv6 rollout to mobile customers (both consumers and businesses).
Operators offering native IPv6 access for business clients and collocation customers include:
Tele2
Phonera
Switzerland
Swisscom offers IPv6 over 6rd to private customers.
Init7 offers native IPv6 on all their offerings.
iway offers native IPv6 on customer lines.
Sunrise provides IPv6 for some of the products.
UPC Cablecom offers native IPv6 with DS-lite to new customers.
Started deploying IPv6 in 2010. In 2011, ATI (Tunisian Internet Agency) obtained a new IPv6 bloc from Afrinic (2c0f:fab0::/28) 2013-2015 : Gnet (Global Net), and CIMSP (Computing Departement of Health Ministry) received IPv6 prefixes from Afrinic. Deployment of an IPv6 tunnel between ATI and HE (Hurricane Electric). In 2016 : CCK (Centre de Calcul El Khawarizmi) obtains its own IPv6 (/32) bloc from Afrinic. In 2016, ISET Charguia (Higher Institute of Technologies in Tunisia) deployed its IPv6 network as end user.
JANET, the UK's education and research network, introduced IPv6 unicast support into its service level agreement in 2008. Several major UK universities and colleges (e.g., Cambridge and Esher College) upgraded their campus routing infrastructure to provide IPv6 unicast support to their users.
Andrews & Arnold launched a native (non-tunneled) IPv6 service in October 2005 and offer IPv6 by default.
The UK Government started to replace much of its Government Secure Intranet (a wide-area network) with a new Public Services Network (PSN) in late 2009. The aspiration was to deploy using IPv6 and support IPv4. The implementation is based on IPv4 but suppliers must be capable of supporting IPv6.
BT Group announced in August 2016 that most of its customers can expect IPv6 connectivity in early 2017.
Zen Internet enabled IPv6 for all customers in December 2015, after a successful trial earlier that year.
Spitfire Network Services offer native dual-stack IPv6 on broadband and Ethernet services.
Sky Broadband enabled IPv6 for a majority of their customers in the first half of 2016.
Greece 28% IPv6 adoption (December 2016)
Portugal 17% IPv6 adoption (December 2016)
Ecuador 17% IPv6 adoption (December 2016)
Peru 15% IPv6 adoption (December 2016)
Malaysia 12% IPv6 adoption (December 2016)
Czech Republic 11% IPv6 Adoption (December 2016)
Brazil 11% IPv6 adoption (December 2016)
Ireland 8% IPv6 adoption (December 2016)
Norway 8% IPv6 adoption (December 2016)
Austria 5% IPv6 adoption (December 2016)
Zimbabwe 5% IPv6 adoption (December 2016)
The Internet Society promoted June 8, 2011, as "World IPv6 Day". The event was described as a "test drive" for full IPv6 rollouts.
The Internet Society declared June 6, 2012, to be the date for "World IPv6 Launch", with participating major websites enabling IPv6 permanently, participating ISPs offering IPv6 connectivity, and participating router manufacturers offering devices enabled for IPv6 by default.
