ISPs warm to IPv6, but old-era Internet plumbing persists

Internet service providers are gradually warming to IPv6, the technology for a vastly more capacious Internet, but there are also signs of a technique to extend the useful lifespan of IPv4.

IPv4 has served the Internet well, but it doesn't have enough addresses for all the world's devices. IPv6 opens the doors for uncountable numbers of devices, but the transition to support it has dragged on for years. A survey by the Number Resource Organization (NRO), a group that represents several central powers that allocate Internet address, shows that Internet service providers (ISPs) are slowly getting IPv6 religion. Of 646 ISPs in the survey, 72 percent are considering promoting IPv6 to their customers in 2013, according to the survey. That's up from 63 percent in 2011 and 2012 and 58 percent in the 2010 survey. Customers are taking advantage of the services, too, though IPv6 data is still only a small fraction of total Internet traffic. In 2010, 60 percent of ISPs said none of their customers use IPv6 connectivity. That's now down to 35 percent. Conversely, the percentage of ISPs that said more than one in fifty of their customers use IPv6 has increased from about 3 percent in 2010 to about 12 percent in 2013.