nanog mailing list archives

Re: Another Big day for IPv6 - 10% native penetration


From: Neil Harris <neil () tonal clara co uk>
Date: Mon, 4 Jan 2016 16:54:17 +0000

On 04/01/16 16:09, Ca By wrote:
On Mon, Jan 4, 2016 at 3:26 AM, Neil Harris <neil () tonal clara co uk> wrote:

On 02/01/16 15:35, Tomas Podermanski wrote:

Hi,

      according to Google's statistics
(https://www.google.com/intl/en/ipv6/statistics.html) on 31st December
2015 the IPv6 penetration reached 10% for the very first time. Just a
little reminder. On 20th Nov 2012 the number was 1%. In December we also
celebrated the 20th anniversary of IPv6 standardization - RFC 1883.

I'm wondering when we reach another significant milestone - 50% :-)

Tomas


Given the recent doubling growth, and assuming this trend is following a
logistic function, then, rounding the numbers a bit for neatness, I get:

Jan 2016: 10%
Jan 2017: 20%
Jan 2018: 33%
Jan 2019: 50%
Jan 2020: 67%
Jan 2021: 80%
Jan 2022: 90%

with IPv4 traffic then halving year by year from then on, and IPv4
switch-off (ie. traffic < 1%) around 2027.

Neil


Just a reminder, that 10% is a global number.

The number in the USA is 25% today in general, is 37% for mobile devices.

Furthermore, forecasting is a dark art that frequently simply extends the
past onto the future.  It does not account for purposeful engineering
design like the "world IPv6 launch" or iOS updates.

For example, once Apple cleanses the app store of IPv4 apps in 2016 as they
have committed and pushes one of their ubiquitous iOS updates, you may see
substantial jumps over night in IPv6 eyeballs, possibly meaningful moving
that 37% number to over 50% in a few shorts weeks.

This will squarely make it clear that IPv4 is minority legacy protocol for
all of mobile, and thusly the immediate future of the internet.

CB


Absolutely. So these figures should be regarded as conservative.

The logistic growth model is just the default model choice for predicting new-things-replacing-old transitions. Any number of things could make the transition go faster, particularly, as you say, pushes by major platform vendors like Apple, and the move to mobile first in the expansion of the Internet in the developing world. Companies like search engine providers and streaming video providers could also exert pressure to speed up the IPv6 transition, if they wished. Also, passing psychological thresholds like 50% or 90% -- or even just fashion, in the sense of decision makers wanting to be associated with success and the future, not the rapidly contracting legacy of the past -- might have an effect to accelerate the eventual collapse of IPv4 traffic volumes.

I can only imagine the scale of the schadenfreude IPv6 proponents will be able to feel once they're able to start talking about IPv4 as a legacy protocol.

Neil



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