4 ms·

Interestingly, my iPhone 6 on Verizon's LTE in the US is running on IPV6. Fascinating that my campus computer is behind the times, relative to my cell phone.

WorldMaker 11y ago
Cell phones have felt the IPv4 exhaustion pressure a lot more strongly than most networks: network address translation is an interesting feat when the device may be moving in three dimensions at highway speeds. Thus the LTE networks have especially been pushing handset manufacturers to support IPv6 first and foremost and deprecate IPv4-centric APIs/applications/software as much and as fast as possible. It's interesting too that you mention a campus computer in comparison: most American Universities were early adopters and thus got very large blocks of IPv4 addresses assigned to them, so in some cases they may be the last to deal with IPv4 exhaustion. (To be fair, though, many have given big blocks back for reassignment, doing what they can to have kept us from an exhaustion crisis before.)
- tedunangst 11y ago
  Per test-IPv6.com AT&T still offers no IPv6. (iOS 9)
teraflop 11y ago
Android has actually been pretty far ahead of iOS in this respect. My Nexus 4 on T-Mobile has been running IPv6-only for close to two years now.
- djrogers 11y ago
  Not really - iOS has been capable of this for a long time - the difference noted in the article is due to iOS 9's change in preference for IPv6. Running an iPhone on IPv6 only far from new...
  - teraflop 11y ago
    Hmm. I don't own a modern iOS device myself, but my understanding was that the kernel support has been there for a long time, but until iOS 9, IPv6 wasn't actually enabled on cellular data networks. Upon investigating a bit more, it looks like that may have only been true for T-Mobile. But it's hard to find definitive statements one way or the other.
    - simon_vetter 11y ago
      iOS8 has been reported to be dual stacked (v6 + v4 addresses) on the cellular side of things on Verizon and a bunch of other (mostly European) networks. What Apple did with iOS9 is improve its address selection algorithm to prefer ipv6 in a majority of cases (if both the device and the server are dual stacked and unless v6 path latency is much greater than its v4 counterpart, v6 will be used). In contrast, ios8 would prefer v4 over v6 when both endpoints were dual stacked. Also, from what I've seen, iOS devices won't provision ipv6 addresses on their cellular interface unless their Carrier Profile says they should, so you might have encountered devices not getting ipv6 addresses even though they were connected to a dual stack network. Wifi always uses v6 if the network supports it.
- deleted 11y ago
  [deleted]
- reportingsjr 11y ago
  I have to agree. As long as I have been using my nexus 5 (almost two years) I have gotten ipv6 addresses on LTE networks.
- reportingsjr 11y ago
  I have to agree. As long as I have been using my nexus 5 (almost two years) I have gotten ipv6 addresses on LTE networks.
pyvpx 11y ago
LTE is IP native, unlike its predecessors; and as previous posters have mentioned wireless networks ran out of IPv4 addresses many moons ago.
- dzhiurgis 11y ago
  So does it mean you can directly connect to it from external network? What happens when you visit a ipv4 website, what IP address will site recognize?
  - finnn 11y ago
    It usually get's NAT'd, just like a traditional IPv4 home network.
verbatim 11y ago
I believe all devices on Verizon's LTE have been supporting IPv6 for some time now.

WorldMaker 11y ago

Cell phones have felt the IPv4 exhaustion pressure a lot more strongly than most networks: network address translation is an interesting feat when the device may be moving in three dimensions at highway speeds. Thus the LTE networks have especially been pushing handset manufacturers to support IPv6 first and foremost and deprecate IPv4-centric APIs/applications/software as much and as fast as possible. It's interesting too that you mention a campus computer in comparison: most American Universities were early adopters and thus got very large blocks of IPv4 addresses assigned to them, so in some cases they may be the last to deal with IPv4 exhaustion. (To be fair, though, many have given big blocks back for reassignment, doing what they can to have kept us from an exhaustion crisis before.)

tedunangst 11y ago
Per test-IPv6.com AT&T still offers no IPv6. (iOS 9)

teraflop 11y ago

Android has actually been pretty far ahead of iOS in this respect. My Nexus 4 on T-Mobile has been running IPv6-only for close to two years now.

djrogers 11y ago
Not really - iOS has been capable of this for a long time - the difference noted in the article is due to iOS 9's change in preference for IPv6. Running an iPhone on IPv6 only far from new...
- teraflop 11y ago
  Hmm. I don't own a modern iOS device myself, but my understanding was that the kernel support has been there for a long time, but until iOS 9, IPv6 wasn't actually enabled on cellular data networks. Upon investigating a bit more, it looks like that may have only been true for T-Mobile. But it's hard to find definitive statements one way or the other.
  - simon_vetter 11y ago
    iOS8 has been reported to be dual stacked (v6 + v4 addresses) on the cellular side of things on Verizon and a bunch of other (mostly European) networks. What Apple did with iOS9 is improve its address selection algorithm to prefer ipv6 in a majority of cases (if both the device and the server are dual stacked and unless v6 path latency is much greater than its v4 counterpart, v6 will be used). In contrast, ios8 would prefer v4 over v6 when both endpoints were dual stacked. Also, from what I've seen, iOS devices won't provision ipv6 addresses on their cellular interface unless their Carrier Profile says they should, so you might have encountered devices not getting ipv6 addresses even though they were connected to a dual stack network. Wifi always uses v6 if the network supports it.
deleted 11y ago
[deleted]
reportingsjr 11y ago
I have to agree. As long as I have been using my nexus 5 (almost two years) I have gotten ipv6 addresses on LTE networks.
reportingsjr 11y ago
I have to agree. As long as I have been using my nexus 5 (almost two years) I have gotten ipv6 addresses on LTE networks.

pyvpx 11y ago

LTE is IP native, unlike its predecessors; and as previous posters have mentioned wireless networks ran out of IPv4 addresses many moons ago.

dzhiurgis 11y ago
So does it mean you can directly connect to it from external network? What happens when you visit a ipv4 website, what IP address will site recognize?
- finnn 11y ago
  It usually get's NAT'd, just like a traditional IPv4 home network.

verbatim 11y ago

I believe all devices on Verizon's LTE have been supporting IPv6 for some time now.