Assessing IPv 6 Adoption

On February 3, 2011 the Internet Assigned Numbers Authority (IANA) allocated the last unallocated blocks of IPv4 address space to the five Regional Internet Registries (RIRs). While many solutions that tackle the problem of address scarcity have been proposed (e.g. address markets), the predominant opinion is that networks will eventually adopt the new Internet Protocol, IPv6. As a result, the Internet is on the verge of its first fundamentally disruptive transition–one which will impose extensive change throughout the network. This inflection point offers a unique opportunity to measure the adoption of new technologies at an unprecedented scale. In this paper, we tackle the problem of measuring this significant transition by first providing a framework to assess the complex ecosystem that underlies IPv6 adoption. We then provide the largest and most comprehensive snapshot of this evolution to date.