The future trend of traffic shortage IPv6 is unclear

The Internet is facing a major upgrade over the past 40 years: the current IPv4 protocol is upgraded to IPv6, and the new protocol can support more Internet users and network devices. However, it is not easy for policy makers, engineers, and large user communities to talk about the transition to IPv6, because no one can accurately and comprehensively explain the network traffic comparison between IPv6 and IPv4.

IPv6 traffic test problems were promptly provided to the network engineer community for the largest IPv6 trial: June 8 world IPv6 day. Up to now, 225 website operators-including Google, Yahoo, and Facebook-have agreed to connect their website content to the Internet in the form of IPv6 for a whole day.

There is a lack of accurate IPv6 traffic data, but this time the initiator of World IPv6 Day and the participants will be able to know how many IPv6 traffic will be transmitted online in June 8, you can also learn about the traffic changes that the conference will bring to IPv6.

"It is very important to measure the comparison between IPv4 and IPv6," said John Brzozowski, an outstanding engineer and chief designer at Comcast IPv6. "as an important network community, we need to understand the transformation process, IPv4 and IPv6 traffic are one of many important indicators."

IPv6 traffic data "helps you understand the upgrade trend. But for carriers, I don't think it is very important to know how well they can satisfy their customers, dave Siegel, vice president of IP service product management at Global Crossing, said, "using appropriate tools to solve IPv6 problems is the most important thing."

For network operators who deploy IPv6, IPv6 communication traffic is likely to remain a hot topic. IPv6 has a 13-year standard history and its main advantage is to solve IPv4 address insufficiency. IPv4 uses a 32-bit address to support 4.3 billion devices directly connected to the network. IPv6 uses a 128-bit address to provide almost unlimited number of network devices.

IPv6 is required because IPv4 addresses are insufficient. Those IPv4 address pools that are not necessarily assigned in their free space were exhausted in May, and all addresses were used in the Asia Pacific region. Some new addresses were left to new companies in the future. According to ARIN, all IPv4 addresses will be completely consumed this fall.

However, IPv6 deployment also faces some problems: its compatibility with IPv4. This means that website operators need to upgrade their network devices and software to fully support IPv6 traffic. At present, many websites are reluctant to put them into practice because there are not many IPv6 network traffic.

Regular network traffic surveys only show data from Arbor Networks: the latest report shows that IPv6 network traffic accounts for less than 0.2% of the total network traffic. Arbor said IPv6 network traffic has dropped by 12% in the past six months. The conclusion comes from a survey of six major operators in North America and Europe.

Of course, not everyone believes that Arbor's IPv6 network traffic is declining. Many website operators plan to be eager to try on the World IPv6 Day.