I’ve been running IPv6 via a Sixxs tunnel at home for several years. When I first set it up I was using an old LinkSys with alternative firmware. It worked, but it had a tendency to break randomly. After a couple of years I got a FritzBox! which “just works”. Over the years the number of end user devices that support IPv6 has grown so these days the hardware is no longer the issue.
What is?
The ISPs.
While some of the smaller regional / niche ISPs might offer IPv6 none of the national providers offer it. Since they’re all on Twitter these days I asked them about their plans and the answer varied from “no plans” to “no timeline”
They’ve all tested it. But that was years ago.
Most major web services are now available via IPv6 and we (Blacknight) turned on IPv6 on our shared hosting plans some time ago. So the content is there.
The connectivity simply isn’t.
Why not?
There are probably quite a few arguments that can be put forward, but ultimately it comes down to economics. The big ISPs feel they have enough IPv4 address space for now, so they’re not motivated enough to turn on IPv6 for their users – even when users are asking for it.
At the moment the only big network with users on IPv6 would be HEAnet.
What could change this?
Demand.
While demand from a bunch of network admins and geeks is “nice” it’s not enough to move the barometer. What would probably make the difference is if government tenders included an IPv6 requirement.
Of course last time I checked none of the Irish government websites were available over IPv6!
Oddly enough Ireland is doing “ok” when compared to some of our European neighbours – at least according to Google’s stats:
The deeper the green the better the level of adoption. Shades of red are bad, while the white moving towards very light green is simply low adoption / penetration.
Put the European status up against the global one and it paints a slightly different picture:
Ireland’s “green” fades quite a bit when you factor in the US and other countries.
Why does this matter?
Put simply running out of IPv4 means there is now a market in selling IPv4 space as most companies realise that until ISPs make the switch we’re all going to have run both address spaces for some time to come. However for a business that relies on connecting devices to the growing ‘net being able to move to IPv6 would make things a lot easier in many respects. With the scarcity of IPv4 comes an increase in costs – a fairly dramatic one based on the prices I’ve seen in recent months.
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