IPv6 off to promising start
Ryan Martin / 12 years ago
IPv6 launched only a few months ago but according to the latest data its made a promising start. The Asia Pacific Network Information Centre research data shows that already the USA has the highest number of IPv6 users with about 3.3 million. This is a lot higher than in China, who are the main reason IPv6 had to be introduced, China have just 0.42% IPv6 penetration translating to 2.1 million users.
Japan boasts nearly 2 million users on IPv6 too whilst Romania has the highest percentage of population on IPv6 with 8.73%. IPv6 launched on June 6, 2012 as the successor to IPv4. It was needed as the 32bit IPv6 system simply didn’t have enough IP addresses for everyone on the planet, by moving to IPv6 this problem has been eliminated but people have to connect with IPv6 first to solve the problem.
At the beginning of this year, Asia’s supply of addresses had already been exhausted while Europe was projected to run out this summer and the US might have been able to hold out until mid-2013. IPv4 could manage roughly 4 billion IP adresses, baring in mind each device needs an IP address it is no wonder we came so close to running out. The new 128-bit IPv6 standard offers up 340 billion, billion, billion, billion addresses.
