IPv6 Is More Stable and Better Supported than 10 Years Ago

30/06/2021

Internet Protocol version (IPv6) is more stable and better supported than it was ten years ago when we celebrated the first IPv6 Day, noted Lee Howard, international expert and keynote speaker at the IPv6 Day webinar organized by LACNIC.

To mark the tenth anniversary of World IPv6 Day, the Regional Internet Registry for Latin America and the Caribbean organized a meeting on the protocol with prominent regional and international panelists.

According to Howard, during these ten years, IPv6 features have been enhanced and its use has grown, with Google statistics showing that native IPv6 traffic worldwide is now between 35% and 36%.

Howard noted that Internet growth rate has been associated with an increase in the use of IPv6. He also mentioned that a greater increase in IPv6 access through IPv6 is observed when users connect to residential networks or from their mobile phones.

The expert also stressed that, throughout these 10 years of evolution, IPv6 deployment has been transparent to users. It appears that IPv6 is providing the best user experience, he added, as IPv4 is now a backup option.

He pointed out that another advantage is that IPv6 has lower latency than IPv4. “All of us measuring IPv6 and measuring its latency compared to IPv4 agree that v6 is faster,” Howard said.

Howard then noted that IPv6 deployment is an investment given the constant rise of the average price per IPv4 address, which is expected to reach $100 in 2023. Instead, with IPv6 “much of the cost is for upgrading the systems and having the right software,” he added.

Up until now, the main barrier has been a lack of understanding of how IPv6 works, but this has changed over time and now, with training such as the courses offered by LACNIC, it is possible to deploy IPv6. “There is still a lot we can do,” Howard concluded.

According to LACNIC, one out of five users in Latin America and the Caribbean uses IPv6.