3 ms·

Yes but <20% adoption 18 years after the protocol was designed seems a bit slow, especially given the pace of overall technological change in this century.

by tgflynn 12y ago

ay 12y ago
Let's take a look at the Internet itself. https://www.ietf.org/rfc/rfc791.txt https://www.ietf.org/rfc/rfc791.txt is dated 1981. Figure 1 in http://www.census.gov/prod/2013pubs/p20-569.pdf http://www.census.gov/prod/2013pubs/p20-569.pdf shows that the first time they recorded was in 1997, at 18%. That's 16 years (actually a bit more because my understanding is rfc791 documents the running code), and still under 20% - so by the same metric, the Internet is a failure! Of course, then we can see the tail of the S-curve: it's doubled in the next three years, then slowed down and the last measurement is 71% of households in 2011. 30% of US households don't have internet at all, in 2011. Now, let's bring the world-wide IPv6 numbers from the past 6 years, numbers from https://www.google.com/intl/en/ipv6/statistics.html#tab=ipv6-adoption https://www.google.com/intl/en/ipv6/statistics.html#tab=ipv6...: 0.05% on 7 September 2008 0.09% on 31 August 2009 0.15% on 30 August 2010 0.34% on 1 September 2011 0.74% on 30 August 2012 1.84% on 1 September 2013 4.42% on 31 August 2014 The US figures from http://6lab.cisco.com/stats/cible.php?country=US http://6lab.cisco.com/stats/cible.php?country=US (available since 2012): 1.32% on 1 September 2012 4.03% on 1 September 2013 9.91% on 1 September 2014 You can see it's been approximately doubling every year - and in the case of US more than doubling. Understandingly, everything starts from zero or a very small number. A double of a very very small number is still a very small number. But if you keep doubling, at some point the numbers stop being small. We're at that point now. I hope these numbers speak by itself - those who ignore them, are welcome to continue doing so. They make an easier competition for those who don't.
- verroq 12y ago
  >You can see it's been approximately doubling every year And by 2018, over 160% of the internet will be running IPv6.
- tgflynn 12y ago
  Yes, but I don't think comparing Internet adoption with IPv6 adoption is terribly valid. The first was a radically new technology and it took years for people to figure out how to best make use of it. IPv6 was supposed to be a purely technical improvement to deal with some deficiencies of IPv4, notably address space limitations. It should mostly concern only network and systems administrators and systems software developers and be largely transparent to end users. It's interesting that the two seem to have similar growth curves, but given the very different audiences involved I'm not sure what to make of that observation. Certainly if you asked knowledgeable people in 1996 how long it would take to achieve near 100% IPv6 adoption I doubt many would have predicted 20 years. On the other hand in 1981 I suspect few would have predicted that a technology developed by DARPA would be used by people in 2000 to buy books and manage their bank accounts.
  - runeks 12y ago
    > It should mostly concern only network and systems administrators and systems software developers and be largely transparent to end users. I'm no network engineer, but as I understand it, to support IPv6, companies need to replace their switches. I think it's fair to say that there are literally millions of switches that need replacing. We are talking billions of dollars in total investments. I really don't see how it's surprising that this will take a while. Billions of dollars don't hang on trees, companies need to earn the money before they can spend it. At the same time, because IPv6 is used less frequently, it is more expensive. The price of electronics is determined by volume: the more you produce the cheaper it gets. This means IPv6 has a price disadvantage to IPv4, which is especially noticeable in the early years (of ~0.1% adoption). A device that is produced at only 0.1% the volume of the most popular devices will be considerably more expensive. This is, in part, why we see an exponential adoption curve: the more people who buy IPv6 equipment the cheaper it gets, and the cheaper it gets the more people buy it, this chain reaction helps to cause the exponential adoption rate. I'm not saying everyone will end up using IPv6, although I think it is likely, but I'm saying it should be no surprise that replacing billions of dollars worth of network equipment takes time.
    - _cbdev 12y ago

Yes but <20% adoption 18 years after the protocol was designed seems a bit slow, especially given the pace of overall technological change in this century.

by tgflynn 12y ago

Yes but <20% adoption 18 years after the protocol was designed seems a bit slow, especially given the pace of overall technological change in this century.

ay 12y ago

Let's take a look at the Internet itself. https://www.ietf.org/rfc/rfc791.txt https://www.ietf.org/rfc/rfc791.txt is dated 1981. Figure 1 in http://www.census.gov/prod/2013pubs/p20-569.pdf http://www.census.gov/prod/2013pubs/p20-569.pdf shows that the first time they recorded was in 1997, at 18%. That's 16 years (actually a bit more because my understanding is rfc791 documents the running code), and still under 20% - so by the same metric, the Internet is a failure! Of course, then we can see the tail of the S-curve: it's doubled in the next three years, then slowed down and the last measurement is 71% of households in 2011. 30% of US households don't have internet at all, in 2011. Now, let's bring the world-wide IPv6 numbers from the past 6 years, numbers from https://www.google.com/intl/en/ipv6/statistics.html#tab=ipv6-adoption https://www.google.com/intl/en/ipv6/statistics.html#tab=ipv6...: 0.05% on 7 September 2008 0.09% on 31 August 2009 0.15% on 30 August 2010 0.34% on 1 September 2011 0.74% on 30 August 2012 1.84% on 1 September 2013 4.42% on 31 August 2014 The US figures from http://6lab.cisco.com/stats/cible.php?country=US http://6lab.cisco.com/stats/cible.php?country=US (available since 2012): 1.32% on 1 September 2012 4.03% on 1 September 2013 9.91% on 1 September 2014 You can see it's been approximately doubling every year - and in the case of US more than doubling. Understandingly, everything starts from zero or a very small number. A double of a very very small number is still a very small number. But if you keep doubling, at some point the numbers stop being small. We're at that point now. I hope these numbers speak by itself - those who ignore them, are welcome to continue doing so. They make an easier competition for those who don't.

verroq 12y ago
>You can see it's been approximately doubling every year And by 2018, over 160% of the internet will be running IPv6.
tgflynn 12y ago
Yes, but I don't think comparing Internet adoption with IPv6 adoption is terribly valid. The first was a radically new technology and it took years for people to figure out how to best make use of it. IPv6 was supposed to be a purely technical improvement to deal with some deficiencies of IPv4, notably address space limitations. It should mostly concern only network and systems administrators and systems software developers and be largely transparent to end users. It's interesting that the two seem to have similar growth curves, but given the very different audiences involved I'm not sure what to make of that observation. Certainly if you asked knowledgeable people in 1996 how long it would take to achieve near 100% IPv6 adoption I doubt many would have predicted 20 years. On the other hand in 1981 I suspect few would have predicted that a technology developed by DARPA would be used by people in 2000 to buy books and manage their bank accounts.
- runeks 12y ago
  > It should mostly concern only network and systems administrators and systems software developers and be largely transparent to end users. I'm no network engineer, but as I understand it, to support IPv6, companies need to replace their switches. I think it's fair to say that there are literally millions of switches that need replacing. We are talking billions of dollars in total investments. I really don't see how it's surprising that this will take a while. Billions of dollars don't hang on trees, companies need to earn the money before they can spend it. At the same time, because IPv6 is used less frequently, it is more expensive. The price of electronics is determined by volume: the more you produce the cheaper it gets. This means IPv6 has a price disadvantage to IPv4, which is especially noticeable in the early years (of ~0.1% adoption). A device that is produced at only 0.1% the volume of the most popular devices will be considerably more expensive. This is, in part, why we see an exponential adoption curve: the more people who buy IPv6 equipment the cheaper it gets, and the cheaper it gets the more people buy it, this chain reaction helps to cause the exponential adoption rate. I'm not saying everyone will end up using IPv6, although I think it is likely, but I'm saying it should be no surprise that replacing billions of dollars worth of network equipment takes time.
  - _cbdev 12y ago