The IPv6 Deployment

The deployment of the latest internet protocol, the Internet Protocol version 6 (IPV6) has been in progress since the mid-200os when the older version, the IPv4, is on the brink of being totally exhausted.

This latest IP version was specifically created and designed to replace the older IP version, the Internet Protocol Version 4 (IPv4). The IPv4 was utilized since 1982, and although it still carries most internet traffic, the IPv4 is on the verge of using up its allocated address space.

As of April 2021, the stats provided by Google showed IPv6 availability of its users is at around 30.30 percent to 35.10 percent depending on what day of the week as it peaks on weekends. Adoption is not the same across the countries as well as on the internet service providers or ISP. A lot of countries have no use of this while there are a few countries that have a 50 percent requirement. Countries like India, Germany and others have more than 50 percent use.

In November 2016, about 98.2 percent or approximately 1,491 of the 1,519 TLDs or what we call as the Top Level Domains in the internet supported the new IP version in order to gain access to their domain name servers. Furthermore, it is said that about 9. million domains which accounted for 4.6 percent had IPv6 address records in their zones. And about 29.2 percent of all the networks in the global BGP routing table had the new IP version protocol support.

By 2011, most if not all major operating systems (OS) in use on most personal computers and server systems are fully equipped with production-quality IPv6 implementations. Mobile phone systems present a huge deployment field for Internet Protocol devices and gadgets as cellular phones (mobile phones) remains to make a transition from 3G to the 4G technologies, wherein voice is provisioned or developed as a VoIP or Voice over Internet Protocol service. This mandates the utilization of IPv6 for such networks.

In 2009, Verizon, one of the top US cellular operators, released technical specs for devices and gadgets to operate on its 4G networks. The specification allows or authorizes IPv6 operation based on the 3GPP Release 8 Specifications (March 2009), and deprecates the older version as an optional capability.

The Deployment Evaluation Tools

Statistics published by Google on IPv6 adoption among its users suggests an increase in the IPv6 prefixes. There are available graphs and maps of IPv6 adoption since 2008 and deployment per country respectively.

Akamai also publishes by country and by network statistics on the adoption of the new protocol for traffic it sees on its global CDN or Content Distribution Network. Moreover, it also show graphs over time, on per country and on a per network basis.

A worldwide view into the history of the increasing IPv6 routing tables can be acquired using the SixXS Ghost Route Hunter. The SixXS Ghost Hunter provided a list of all allocated IPv6 prefixes up to the year 2014 and marks with colors the ones that were actually being announced into the Internet BGP Tables. When a certain prefix is announced, it could mean that the Internet Service Provider (ISP) at least can receive the new IP version packets for their prefix.

The incorporation of the new IP version on an existing network infra can be checked and monitored from other sources, this can include:

The RIR (Regional Internet Registries) IPv6 prefix allocation
IPv6 Transit Service, and
The Japan ISP IPv6 Services

IPv6 Testing, Evaluation and Certification

There are organizations that are involved with the international IPv6 test and evaluation, ranging from the United States Department of Defense (DOD) down 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^[13]
SATSIX

Major highlights and developments of IPv6

Year	Major development and availability milestones
1996	Alpha quality IPv6 support in Linux kernel development version 2.1.8.
An IPv6 virtual network for testing called 6bone has started.
1997	IBM’s AIX 4.3 becomes the first commercial platform that supports IPv6 by the end of this year.
Also in this year, Early Adopter Kits for the DEC’s OS, Tru64 and OpenVMS, are made available.
1998	Microsoft Researchhasreleased their first experimental IPv6 stack. This support is not intended for use in a production environment.
1999	In February of 1999, the IPv6 Forum is founded by the IETF Deployment WG to drive deployment all over the world. This results in the development and creation of the regional and local IPv6 Task Forces.
1999	Also during this year,the implementation of the first IPv6 tunnel broker, by Ivano Guardini that also contributed the RFC:3053, at CSELT.
2000	The production-quality BSD support for IPv6 has become generally available in early up to mid-2000 in FreeBSD, OpenBSD, and NetBSD thru the KAME project.
An IPv6 technology preview version for Windows 2000 has been released by Microsoft in March. A month earlier, Sun Solaris supports IPv6 in Solaris 8. Compaq also shipped IPv6 with Tru64.
The European Commission launched the European IPv6 Task Force on April 23 of this year.
2002	The Microsoft Windows NT 4.0 and the Windows 2000 SP1 have restricted IPv6 support for research and testing since at least this year.
Microsoft Windows XP 2001 supports the new IP version for at least developmental purposes. In Windows XP SP1 2002 and Windows Server 2003, the new IP version was included and this time as a core networking technology, which is suitable and ideal for commercial deployment. In September of this year, IBM z/Operating System supports the new IP since version 1.4.
2003	Apple Mac OS X v10.3 “Panther” 2003 supports IPv6. The IPv6 is enabled by default.
2004	ICANN publicly announced in July 2004 that the IPv6 address records for the Japan (jp) and Korea (kr) country code top-level domain name servers can be seen in the DNS root server zone files with serial number 2004072000. The IPv6 records for France (fr) were eventually added but on a latter date. With this, it made IPv6 DNS publicly operational.
2005	The experimental status of Linux 2.6.12 has been removed from its IPv6 implementation.
2007	Microsoft Windows Vista (2007) supports IPv6 which is enabled by default. Also on this year, Apple’s AirPort Extreme 802.11n base station includes an IPv6 gateway in its default configuration. It employs 6to4 tunneling and manually configured static tunnels. (Note: 6to4 was disabled by default in later firmware revisions.)
2008
The AAAA records for the IPv6 of six root name servers on February 4, 2008 were added by the IANA. With this transition, it is now possible to resolve domain names employing only the new IP version. The IETF on March 12, 2008 had an hour long IPv4 blackout during its meeting as an opportunity to obtain and capture an informal experience data to inform protocol design going forward. This incident led to many fixes in the OS and in several apps. On May 27, 2008, the European Commission publish their Action Plan for the deployment of Internet Protocol version 6 (IPv6) in the continent (Europe). This is aim of making the IPv6 readily available to about 25% of European users by year 2010.
2011	On June 8, 2011, the Internet Society, in connection with many large companies and organizations, held the World IPv6 Day, This is a global 24 hour test of the new IP version.
2012	On June 6, 2012, the Internet Society, together with a lot of big and influential companies and organizations, held the World IPv6 Launch Day. This event is a global permanent deployment of the IPv6.

Operating System (OS) Support

By the year 2011, most if not all major OS that are being used on personal computers and server systems had production-quality IPv6 implementations Since Windows 2000, Microsoft Windows has always supported the new IP version, and in production-ready status starting with Windows XP. Windows Vista and later have improved IPv6 support. The OS for Mac (macOS) since Panther 10.3, Linux 2.6, FreeBSD, and Solaris have mature production implementations. Some implementations of the BitTorrent peer-to-peer file transfer protocol have employed IPv6 in order to avoid NAT problems which are not uncommon for IPv4 private networks.

Government Support

Governments across the globe has been supporting for IPv6 in new devices and equipments since the early 2000. For example the US government has specified in 2005 that by June 30, 2008, the network backbones of all federal agencies had to be upgraded to the new IP version. According to reports, the deadline was met earlier. Moreover, the US government in 2010 required all federal agencies by 2012 to give native dual-stacked IPv4/IPv6 access to external and public services. Furthermore, internal clients have to employ IPv6 by year 2014. The progress on the US government’s external facing IPv6 services is being monitored by the NIST. The People’s Republic of China on one hand has implemented a five-year plan for the deployment of the new IP version and calls it the China Next Generation Internet.

Coexistence with the older version

The Internet Engineering Task Force on March 7^th, 2013 has created a working group exclusively for the IPv4 sunset. This is in preparation for the eventual protocol changes that could be utilized to support sunset/shutdown of the remaining IPv4 networks. But in May 2018, the IETF was shutdown since no immediate work could be identified because of the slow transition from IPv4 to IPv6.

The working group expects the new version to exist side by side with the older version as it is considered impractical to transition to the newer version in just a short term. The plan of coexisting between the two is expected to be based on dual-stack, tunneling or translation mechanisms. The dual-stack implementations need two parallel logical networks. This however will increase the cost and can also increase the complexity of the network. The older IP version is generally expected to slowly transition or switch into segmented subnetworks maximizing the IPv4 residual Deployment. The slow transition to the new IP version has caused considerable resentment amongst the internet community across the globe.

As a result, a lot of big businesses like the Microsoft are now taking precautionary steps in turning the older version off and running the new version-only within the company. In a recent report, Microsoft have describe their heavily translated IPv4 network as “potentially delicate,” “operational challenging,” and with regards to the dual-stack operations like those running the two IP versions almost simultaneously, “Complex.”

Deployment per Country and per Region

Below are the deployments of the IPv6 on a select per country and region basis.

Algeria:

AnwarNet; AfriNIC has assigned range of the new IP version’s address space to AnwarNet which begun IPv6 services in 2011.

Australia:

AARNet is done with the high speed network connecting academic and research customers network AARNet 3 in major metropolitan areas with international links to major ISPs in the US, Asia and in Europe. One of its vision was to support equally both the older and newer IP protocols. It also supports multicast routing and also jumbo frames.

In April 230, 2008, IPv6, now known as Pty Ltd., it introduced the very first commercial-grade IPv6 tunnel broker service in the country. And in June the same year, it introduced the first dual-stacked web hosting service in Australia. Moreover, Internode became the first commercial ISP in the country to have full IPv6 connectivity and make it available to customers. It was on July 18^th, 2008 thru Whirlpool that its availability to its customers became official.

The Victorian State Government have granted about A$350,000 in order to put up an IPv6 testbed network or VIC6 that is freely available to industry for them to evaluate their IPv6 products and strategies. Telstra on September 5^th, 2011 said that their backbone network was fully double-stacked and have started providing its enterprise, government and wholesale customers with IPv6 connectivity. Morevoer, Telstra announced that they are helping clients through the transition, and vows to activate IPv6 addressing by September 2016 for their mobile network.

Aussie Broadband on one hand offers native IPv6 as an option in beta feature. As of November 2018, Aussie Broadband was force to withdraw it due to various issues and bugs in their Cisco supplied equipment.

Bangladesh

In this country, Infolink has successfully tested and started commercial IPv6 beta deployment to users on May 22, 2017.

Belgium

Logica Netherlands has successfully tested native IPv6 thru UMTS/GPRS both in this country and in Netherlands within a vehicle platform as an intelligent transportation system solution on July 13^th, 2010. It was done thru GSM and Tethering using a Nokia Smartphone. Logica Netherlands operates within the SPITS project and in cooperation with Mobistar Belgium. In September 2013, research and government ISP Belnet offered native IPV6 to all clients. VOO also started the transition ahead in April 2013 which lead to an impressive growth in IPv6 in the country. Telenet begun its transition in February 2014, aiding to push the Bcountry’s average of IPv6 usage to as much as 30 percent as of September 2014. This also put them to the top 10 all over the world in terms of ISPs of which users are visiting websites with IPv6. And as of January 2019, APNIC said that the IPv6 has reached about 52 percent although it briefly spiked to as much as 70 percent in August 2017.

Brazil

This South American country reached about 38.4 percent in terms of IPv6 adoption as of April 2021. In 2015 the IPv6 adoption was boosted thru th country’s telecommunication agency Anatel which said that all internet operators and service providers are required to provide IPv6 address to all users and clients. This was one of the strategies employed by Brazil to speed up the deployment.

Bulgaria

To adopt IPv6 in Bulgaria, the country has invested on a research center in order to study the possibilities of the deployment of IPv6. The center will operate together with other facilities that have IBM Blue Gene/P supercomputer. In 2015, ISP Bizoo allowed IPv6 to many homes in Bulgaria, and by the end of 2016, ComNet Bulgaria Holding Ltd has provided complete IPv6 support to all clients and customers within the network in the country.

Canada

The deployment of IPv6 in this North American country is relatively slow, with Canadian ISPs like Bell Canada lacking the support for their residential clients, and most of their business customers. And as of August 2021, Google Statistics shows that the country has managed to reach an IPv6 adoption rate of about 34.69 percent.

Rogers Communications was able to deploy native IPv6 network wide. This includes DOCSIS 3.0/3.1 wireline broadband network and their HSPA/LTE mobile network. Three years earlier, it seems that all Wireless LTE devices in the network have only IPv6 address and that there is no more IPv4 Gateway, IP address and DNS for service.
Shaw Communications has IPv6 including DOCSIS 3.1 for all their residential customers utilizing the latest XB6 cable modems in 2018.
Fibrenoire, a Canadian Metro Ethernet fibre network operating in Quebec and in Ontario, has been providing native IPv6 connectivity to their customers since 2009.
Aptum Technologies(formerly Cogeco 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 as well as for cable customers serviced by Rogers Communications.
Vidéotron has deployed their own IPv6 network to all their customers as a beta service.
SaskTel has also deployed IPv6 support for business customers who are subscribing to their Dedicated Internet or LANSpan IP product.
Telus has deployed IPv6 support for business services and residential customers with 61.23% IPv6 usage in August 2021 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.
TelKel, a relatively new ISP which offers FTTH only, in Montreal, Quebec and suburbs, supports native dual-stack IPv4 and IPv6 since the beginning.
Cogeco provides IPv6 to customers.
Beanfield Metroconnect provides IPv6 for their business clients.
EBOX has provided to all of its clients IPv6 since 2013 on fiber and DSL/FTTN last-mile technologies.

The People’s Republic of China

The China Next Generation Internet or CNGI is an ongoing initiative initiated by the government with a vision of gaining a significant position in the development of the Internet through the early adoption of the new IP version. At the last Summer Olympics the country has highlighted CNGI’s IPv6 infrastructure. It was the first international event to showcase the IPv6 on the net. It was believed to be the largest display of the IPv6 technology since its inception. Its deployment was widespread across all related apps, which means IPv6 was used in data networking and camera transmission for sporting events, to civil apps like those used in security cameras and even in transport sectors like those in Taxis and hailing services. The Summer Olympics was streamed live over the net and these allowed a lot of spectators to witness the biggest sporting event and at the same time allowed network cars to avoid the massive traffic. All network ops of the Summer Olympics used the new IP version.

Furthermore, the CERNET or the China Education and Research Network has put up a native IPv6 called CERNET2, and since then, a lot of academic institutions in the country joined it for the connectivity of the new IP version. This is said to be the widest deployment of IPv6 in the country and is managed by 25 major universities in China which includes Shanghai Jiao Tong University and Beijing University of Posts and Telecommunications.

In 2017, the country has launched an “Action Plan for Promoting Large-scale Deployment of Internet Protocol Version 6.” Here businesses and operators are encourages to adopt the IPv6 network. It was detailed in this plan that the country had set goals to develop a next generation of internet technical system and industrial ecosystem that has its own Intellectual Property Rights in 5 to 10 years. Furthermore, its development was aimed to have the largest IPv6 network all over the world by 2025.

A year later however, researchers from the Georgia Institute of Technology categorized China as being a part of the 169 countries that had not much traffic of the new IP version. Just this year, Akamai reported that the State of the Internet Report stressed an IPv6 adoption rate of 23.5 percent in China.

China on July 2021 has announced its plan to fully complete the rollout of the IPv6 across the country by the year 2030. And in May 2021, it overtook its closest rival India and has then become the world’s number 1 in terms of having most IPv6 addresses all over the world with more than 528 million.

Czech Republic

In September 2019, Google and APNIC Stats reported that the Czech Republic has a deployment rate of about 11 percent.

O2 Czech Republic managed to deploy on residential xDSL lines sicne 2012. They have utilized dual-stack PPPoE with CGN for the older version. Only about /64 prefix size is available thru DHCP-PD.

T-Mobile Czech Republic have deployed the new version on residential xDSL Lines since 2014 and also uses dual-stack PPPoE with one public static IPv4 address. It has /56 IPv6 prefix delegated thru DHCP-PD.

UPC Czech Republic on the other hand has deployed IPv6 in 2017. They use IPv6-only network with IPv4 over DS-Lite.

IPv6 is basically available in datacenters and web hosting companies, and as of 2019, mobile network has not supported yet the IPv6.

Denmark

In July 2020, Denmark has only 4 percent IPv6 traffic. The ISP Fullrate though has started offering IPv6 to their customers but they have to check if their router is compatible, otherwise clients has to request for a new router if it is not. Small ISPs have nonetheless started implementing the protocols. Mobile provider in Denmark have also begun implementing the deployment.

Estonia

Since 2014, the Estonia Telekom has provided native IPv6 access to residential and business broadband connections. The country has reached an IPv6 adoption rate of 28 percent as of July 2020 based on the reports provided by Google.

Finland

FICORA which is short for Finnish Communications Regulatory Authority, and the NIC for the .fi top level domain, has added IPv6 address to DNS servers, and lets entering IPv6 address when registering domains. The registration service domain.fi for new domains is also available over IPv6.

It held a national Ipv6 day on June 9, 2015 and during that time, Elisa and DNA.Oyj begun providing IPv6 on mobile subscriptions, while the Telia Company and DNA Oyj begun providing the new IP version on most fixed-line connections. The Google statistics shows that the country has managed to achieve an IPv6 adoption rate of 31 percent as of July 2020.

France

AFNIC, NIC for the .fr Top Level Domain has started implementing IPv6 operations.

Its national academical network, the Renater, has offered IPv6 connectivity which includes support to all their members.

At the end 2007, A major ISP in the country, FREE, rolled out the new version as an opt-in. And in 2020, the possibility of an opt-out was removed, reaching a 99 percent coverage. And just after Christmas of 2020, the French ISP has activated IPv6 on their mobile network.

Nerim provided native IPv6 to all their clients since March 2003, while Orange is still rolling out IPv6 on its wired network. OVH has implemented the deployment, FDN has provided it since November 2008 and SFR has also rolled out the IPv6 as an opt-in on its wired network.

Bouyques Telecoms begun deployment in 2017.

As of December 2020, all mobile operators in the country have supported the IPv6. And in January 2021, the country has achieved a 42.91 percent IPv6 traffic as per Google, while APNIC reported it at 40 percent.

Germany

According to Google, the adoption rate of this country has reached 52 percent as of April 2021.

DFN backbone network offers full native IPv6 support for their customers. Much of the country’s scientific networks in the country are connected to DFN’s network. This includes Munich Scientific Network.

In September 2012, German’s telecom giant, Deutsche Telekom has rolled IPv6 for new All-IP DSL clients. It started to roll out dual stack in their mobile network August 2015, and in January 2020, it announced a new APN for IPv6 only. The deployment rate for mobile and fixed network was already 76 percent as of December 31, 2020.

Vodafone Kabel Deutschland and Unitymedia offered native IPv6 to their new customers. Vodafone Kabel and Unitymedia as of 31 December 2018 has an adoption rate of about 63 percent.

M-net [de], a regional carrier and ISP, offers native IPv6 for their customers. Adoption rate was for M-Net is 72% by the end of December 2020.

Regional carrier and ISP NetCologne has started offering native IPv6 to its clients. The deployment rate was pegged at 68% by December 31, 2018.

Primacom (now part of PŸUR) offers IPv6 for their customers. PŸUR [de] (former Tele Columbus) offers IPv6 connectivity since end of 2014.

Deutsche Glasfaser offers ipv6 via DHCPv6 or 6rd. IPv4 connectivity is provided thru the CGN to its clients.

O2 has introduced IPv6 for new DSL customers in 2018

Vodafone has started with IPv6 in its mobile network by the end of 2019.

O2 Germany had begun to roll out IPv6 in its mobile network, at first only for their new contracts, but later extended to all of customers till end of June 2021

Hong Kong

In 2004, Hong Kong Internet exchange started to operate its IPv6 exchange. Two years later, the Country’s Internet registration Corporation, which is also the administrator of the .hk domain begun offering IPv6 domain services to clients.

The Hong Kong government has enhanced the Government backbone Network to inter-connect the systems of Bureaux and department using the new IP version in 2008. The next year, they further enhanced the Government Internet Gateway systems in order for the public to gain access to over 200 government websites. Moving forward, in 2012, the Hong Kong Observatory launched the IPv6 network time service, the Next Generation GoVWiFi Programme was launched by the Hong Kong government in orderto give better and faster Wi-Fi service. And in 2013, the goIPv6 Consortium introduced free IPv6 tunneling services to all users in Hong Kong.

Hungary

In August 2008, the country’s Externet started deploying IPv6 on their network. And its service was commercially available by May 2009. Magyar Telekom was doing test runs on its production environment in 2009. Free customer trials in November 2009 begun for those on ADSL and Fiber Optic. Clients of Maryar Telekom are given a /128 thru DHCP-ND unless they register their DUID and if they do, a /56 will be given. In December 2015 RCS&RDS allowed native dual-stack IPv6 customers. A month earlier, UPC Hungary has also introduced the DS Lite allowing customer-to-customer basis if requested.

Hungary is at 20 percent in terms of IPv6 statistics adoption rate as of July 2020 according to Google. APNIC reported Hungary to have reached 20 percent as of December 2018.

India

The country’s Department of Telecommunications has ran workshops on the new version in February 2015 at their headquarters in New Delhi. The agency has also released roadmaps on the deployment of the IPv6.

Sify Technologies Ltd begun rolling out IPv6 in 2005. It has a dual-stack network which supports commercial services on IPv6 transport. Sify.com became the first to launch a dual-stack commercial portal.

ERNET, Department of Electronics &IT has provided dual-stack networks since 2006 and has been part of European Union’s funded initiative like 6Choice, 6lowpan, Myfire, GEANT among others.

Reliance JIO has deployed IPv6 and offers it in the country in September 2016. It has migrated about 200 million of their clients on their IPv6 only mobile network at the end of 2017.

Google reported India’s deployment to be at 55.8 percent as of April 2021 while APNIC pegged the country at 70 percent and prefers the new IP version more as compared to old version.

Italy

As of April 2021, Italy had an adoption rate of just 4.73 percent according to Google.

In 2015, Fastweb announced the initial availability of IPv6 address for all its residential clients. But as of February this year, only large ISPs have provided full IPv6 service via 6rd.

Italy’s largest ISP, TIM, offered basic pilot service since 2017, allowing its clients to connect using IPv6. This however did not provide permanent IPv6 addresses. And the functionality that it offers is very minimal and still on the experimental side.

Sky WiFi offered IPv6 service using dual stack. They will eventually switch to IPv6-only network using MAP-T for IPv4 connectivity.

Dimensione also provides IPv6 by allocating a /48 thru DHCPv6 Prefix Delegation with IPv4 in Dual Stack

Pianeta Fibra assigned a /56 via DHCPv6 Prefix Delegation with IPv4 Dual Stack, while Navigabene also assigned a /56 thru IPv6 over PPPoE depending on the technology utilized in the access network.

Japan

NTT announced that it is the world’s first ISP to offer public availability of IPv6 services in March 2000. According to Google, Japan as of April 2021 has currently had an adoption rate of 38.46 percent.

Lebanon

Ogero in this country enabled support for DSL users and for private operators last July 2018.

Lithuania

LITNET Academic and Research Network has supported the new version since 2001, but most ISPs have not yet publicly deployed it.

Luxembourg

RESTENA, the country’s national research and education network said that they have been running the new version for a long time. They also reported that they are connected to GEANT2 Network, which is one of Europe’s giant networks. Moreover, this runs Luxembourg’s internet exchanges and traffic which supports IPv6 peering. Furthermore, RESTENA runs .lu top level domain.

The country’s main telecom and internet provider, P&T Luxembourg announced that since January 2009, they have the production quality IPv6 connectivity. And in September of the same year, they managed to connect with their first professional customer. Deployment of IPv6 for residential customer is expected to be launched last 2010.

Google statistic’s shows Luxembourg reaching an adoption rate of 36 percent as of July 2020.

The Netherlands

The maintainer of the country’s academical and research network, SURFNet, announced in 1997 that they have introduced IPv6 to its network. They initially started using IPv6-to-IPv4 tunnels. Its backbone is purely running dual-stack, supporting IPv4 and IPv6 to most of its customers and users.

XSSAll was the first Dutch broadband provider to introduce in 2002 the new IP version to its network. However, it was purely on an experimental basis. And in May 2009, the provider gave the first native IPv6 DSL Connections and by August 2010 Native IPv6 DSL Connections became available to their clients and customers. IPv6 has become available by default to all their new customers since June 2012.

Since the early 2004, the country’s business-orientated Internet provider BIT BV has been offering IPv6 to all their clients, users and customers.

SixXS had two private Dutch founders. The company has been partnering with IPv6 Internet service providers in several countries in order to give IPv6 connectivity thru the use of IP tunnels to all its users across the world since 2000. It began out as IPng.nl with a base of predominantly Dutch user and reorganized as SixXS allowing it to reach users internationally and be diversified in ISP support. SixXS also give multiple related services and software which contributed significantly to IPv6 adoption and operation worldwide. In June 6, 2017, the company ceased their operation.

Business ISP Introweb initially provides 6 euro per month to 100 customers with an IPv6-only 8 Mbit/s ADSL connection as a pilot test. The companies and customers want to learn how to adapt to IPv6 as for themselves in working on a network that is fully IPv6 enabled.

Signet is the country’s first ISP to provide IPv6 connectivity alongside the older version on several national fiber networks which includes EuroFiber, GlasVezel Eindhoven, BRE, Glasnet Veghel, Ziggo and Fiber Port. .

Leaseweb together with some of the biggest in the country’s hosting companies supports IPv6 but T-Mobile does not have any plans of deploying the new version to date.

New Zealand

The country according to New Zealand IPv6 Task Force has reached the near-universal level on its large public and private sector organizations. Most of the country’s new ISP and carrier community have a test environment for the new version and a lot have began bringing in the new version and services on-stream. Websites of New Zealand’s government agencies like the Ministry of Defence, Ministry if Primary Industries and the Department of Internal Affairs have adopted the IPv6.

The Republic of the Philippines

Globe Telecom, the country’s biggest mobile and internet service provider have started the transition from the old version to the IPv6. Upgrading of some of the country’s agencies like the Department of Science and Technology together with Globe have tested the new version.

The Russia Federation

The country’s ER-Telecom offers native IPv6 to users since October 10, 2013 using PPPoE Dual-Stack and DHCPv6 Prefix Delegation.

Since April 2017, MTS has been offering native IPv6 to mobile clients.

The United Kingdom

The country’s educational and research network, JANET, have started introducing IPv6 unicast to several service level in 2008. Major UK Universities and colleges like Cambridge and Esher College have upgraded their campus routing infra in order to give IPv6 unicast support to their users.

In October 2005, Andrews & Arnold introduced a native IPv6 service and offers it by default.

In 2009, the government has started to replace much of its Government Secure Intranet with a new Public Services Network (PSN). The scheme was to deploy using IPv6 and support IPv4. The implementation is based on IPv4 but suppliers must be capable of supporting IPv6.

In 2016, BT Group said that most of their customers can expect IPv6 connectivity by 2017. Spitfire Network Services also offered dual-stack IPv6 on broadband and Ethernet services, while Sky Broadband enabled IPv6 to most of their customers.

EE Limited enabled the new version on the Radio access network on 2018. Aquis on one hand enabled the new version for their broadband clients in 2015.

As of January 2021, the Google statistics show the country’s adoption rate of 34.5 percent.

United States of America

Majority of the smartphones in the US utilizes IPv6, although a small percent of computers, tabs and gadgets uses the same version. Google reported an adoption rate of 44.8 percent as of April 2021.

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The Stealth Communication in 2000 has provided production quality IPv6 after receiving its pTLA Status. It eventually got its allocation from ARIN in 2001, making it the 12^th organization to receive IPv6 addressing in North America.

Sonic.Net initially offers partial support for IPv6 in 2005. The Department of Defense in 2008 holds a larger IPv6 allocation. Also on the same year, Hurricane Electric became an early adopter of IPv6 whilst maintaining a native IPv6 backbone. It is also one of the biggest IPv6 connectivity and hosting providers in the country.

ComCast in 2011 has started IPv6 pilot test employment. Time Warner Cable also started doing test of IPv6 for their customers starting September. AT&T began testing their network with IPv6 back in 2006 and rolled out IPv6 in the fourth quarter of this year. In 2012, the US Department of Education became the first cabinet-level government agency to deploy IPv6 on its DNS services.

In 2012 Century Link, Charter Communications, Google Fiber offered IPv6 to clients and launched IPv6 supports. And in 2013, T-Mobile in the country made the new IP version its default phone configuration.

In 2016, Verizon Wireless has more than 72 percent of its users had IPv6. And Hurricane Electric in 2017 became the first internet backbone in the world to have achieve 4000 IPv6 BGP adjacencies.

Other countries like Malaysia, Vietnam, Mexico have an IPv6 adoption rates of 50.06 percent, 44.6 percent and 37.89 percent respectively.

Events:

World IPv6 Day

On June 8^th, 2011, the Internet Society started promoting this day as “World IPv6 Day.” This is to describe the test drive for the full roll out of the new IP version.

June 6, 2012 became the “World IP Launch”, with participating major websites and countries allowing IPv6 permanently, ISPs offering IPv6 connectivity and router manufacturers offering devices allowing IPv6 by default.