In the U.S. during the third quarter of 2013, 4.2 percent of all traffic seen by Akamai came in over IPv6. The U.S ranks fifth in the world for IPv6 traffic, behind Luxembourg (4.9 percent), France (5.0 percent), Switzerland (7.0 percent) and Romania (7.3 percent).
Digging a little deeper, some network service providers have larger IPv6 traffic numbers than others. During the third quarter of 2013, 51 percent of Google Fiber and 39 percent of Verizon Wireless traffic came in over IPv6. The Akamai report noted that Google Fiber is largely a new deployment and, as such, the IPv6 penetration is not surprising. In the case of Verizon Wireless, Verizon has publicly stated that devices connected over LTE will first attempt to connect over IPv6.
Other U.S carriers do not yet have the same double-digit level of IPv6 traffic. 8.2 percent of AT&T’s traffic and 6.9 percent of Comcast’s traffic came into Akamai over IPv6. Time Warner Cable also has some IPv6 users, though they only represented 1.8 percent of all traffic that Akamai saw.
Read the full story at Enterprise Networking Planet:
IPv6 Traffic and Global Internet Connection Speeds on the Rise
Sean Michael Kerner is a senior editor at InternetNews.com. Follow him on Twitter @TechJournalist.