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Comment by alt227 | Hacker News Reader

People love this graph and regularly tout it as if it explains full internet usage. Especially when they dont bother to add any explanation or comment alongside it.

This graph is mainly due to the fact that telcos use IPv6 for mobile devices, nothing more. Over time you will see that graph flatline and peter out as mobile device uage reaches critical mass.

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In US even desktops have 45% adoption rate: https://radar.cloudflare.com/explorer?dataSet=http&groupBy=i...

afaik every single major US fixed line ISP is rolling out ipv6.

Yep, every ISP and every device supports IPv6 and has done for ages.

Show me one where they have disabled IPv4 and only use IPv6 that is not a mobile device or Telco ISP.

It seems more the other end of the stick: the IPv4 side of the graph is mainly held up due to corporations. The consumer internet continues to switch, but corporate VPNs are going to continue to drag down the numbers until corporations get charged enough for IPv4 address space that bottom lines start to notice.

Yes good point, I agree that IPv4 addresses are going to become a commodity in the future and their value will start to increase dramatically to the point where it is only corporations which can afford to use them. IPv6 use may well start to spike again if that happens.

Every major ISP in the US, India, and most of the rest of Asia that I’ve seen is handing out and using IPv6 now too.

Hell, chances are if you got a new router (like any new client) for your ISP, you’d be on v6 too.

Yep, and even with all those countries with their billions of mobile devices IPv6 use still hasnt even reached 50%.

Pretty much all ISPs hand out both IPv6 and IPv4 addresses to their clients, this is nothing new. When they start only issueing IPv6 IPs is when it would start truly taking off, but it will never get to that point and it will never happen.

Looks like it’s right at 50% and rapidly increasing.

[https://www.google.com/intl/en/ipv6/statistics.html]

What exactly are you going on about? 5-10 years for the old devices to be EOL’d, and we’ll likely be at 95%.

Devices maybe, software won't :-\ (We're going to see ever-diminishing pockets of IPv4 around for a loooong time, much like we still see pockets of Cobol.)

pick a lane?

The trend on that graph is slowing, and when we reach criticl mass on the number of mobile devices the graph will be flat.

There is no chance we will be at 95% usage in 5 years or so.

If you like, we can make a wager?

According to APNIC labs, IPv6 adoption in India is ~79% and in China it is ~53%.

Those are the only two countries that could plausibly have billions of mobile devices and they appear to have reached 50%.

India: https://stats.labs.apnic.net/ipv6/CN?c=IN&x=1&v=1&p=1&r=1&w=...

China: https://stats.labs.apnic.net/ipv6/CN?c=CN&x=1&v=1&p=1&r=1&w=...

Wow, billions of devices per country and they have still only reached 50%.

Damn, the jealousy (?) is palpable. You know you will have literally zero impact on adoption no matter how snarky you are, right?

Jealousy? I think you may need to expand your vocabulary a bit!

I have an opinion on something, I assume thats ok? You seem to be here trying to prove me wrong, and also commenting on my tone of reply.

Im not trying to tell you that you are wrong, only stating what I think. If you dont like my opinion, feel free to ignore it. You are not forced to comment.

It feels like you are constantly moving goal posts here. Your original statement was it will die a slow and quiet death. Are you now saying that this mobile use case will start to switch back to IPv4? It may not kill IPv4, like was initially planned, but it's not going away.

Apologies maybe slow death was the wrong phrase. I did mean that, but only in the non-mobile space. Obviously mobile device networks have made good use of IPv6 and will continue to.

However In another thread it was argued that when IPv4 addresses become very expensive, that could trigger a big shift to IPv6. I agree with this statement and so IMO it is possible that IPv6 may well become ubiquitous in the future.

When usage is increasing rapidly and is literally ~ 50% of the entire planet right now, how is ANY kind of 'death' a useful descriptor?

IPv4 is the one that descriptor belongs on, eh?

No I dont agree at all.

Usage is in no way 'rapidly increasing', in fact the google graph everyone is touting around shows that it has taken over 10 years to not even get to 50%. It also shows it is slowing down, the curve is starting to become less steep.

When Maximum possible IPv6 usage is not even at 50% after over a decade and the usage curve is slowing, how can you possibly say that IPv4 is dying and IPv6 usage is rapidly increasing?

Oh, now it’s a problem because it’s been about a decade?

So what, another decade and we should be mostly done?

What do you think is a reasonable amount of time to redo the entire world’s networking infrastructure across 200+ countries and 8 something billion people, exactly?

This is an absurd argument, you know that right?

> Oh, now it’s a problem because it’s been about a decade?

No, but taking over a decade to not even be half adopted does not count as rapid in my opinion.

> So what, another decade and we should be mostly done?

No, as I have said many many times, the graph is slowing.

> What do you think is a reasonable amount of time to redo the entire world’s networking infrastructure

We dont need to, thats the point. All networking equipment in the world already supports IPv6, so why isnt it at 100% usage and IPv4 is turned off already?

>This is an absurd argument, you know that right?

Who is the fool, the person saying what they think or the person continuing to participate in an argument they consider absurd?

You dont need to make everybody in the world agree with what you are saying, it is ok to have differing opinions. You know that right?

I am done now. I accept that you disagree with me and thats fine. Can you afford the same decency or will you continue to tell me I'm wrong?

Hahahahaha

It was simply to point out that you are objectively incorrect. No commentary was necessary. My phone and home broadband both use IPv6 primarily.

If you were correct, that graph would have been over 50% ages ago.

As it is, that graph is showing how adoption is slowing and has been for the last 10 years.

Hardly anybodies physical internet connection is using IPv6 primarily worldwide, those numbers are all mobile device space.

> Over time you will see that graph flatline and peter out as mobile device uage reaches critical mass.

...what? The majority of people access the Internet from their phone, and not only since yesterday either. Are you arguing that this is temporary fad somehow?

I don't think they are arguing for a decrease. I took flatline and peter out to mean stabilize.

That is correct, thankyou for assuming the positive instead of the negative.

I personally believe that at about 60% utilisation the line on the graph will become flat and stay that way.

I am arguing that at some point there wont be any more people without phones, meaning it has reached critical mass and so IPv6 adoption will stall. The number of smartphones in the world will not keep on going up forever.

That would only happen if all of v6's growth is coming from mobile users, no mobile networks are growing/deployed without v6, and also no users are dropping their wired connections.

You can look at the AS breakdowns on APNIC's stats and see that ASs that serve non-mobile customers are getting v6, and that some ASs for mobile users aren't. So no, it won't stall.

Slow down perhaps, but it has to slow down at some point or it'll go above 100%.

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