A decade old guessing game finally came to an end in mid-2012.

America was supposed to be hopelessly behind while Europe had not much to show after a decade of spending EU money lavishly on IPv6 related projects. India released a National IPv6 Deployment Roadmap, outlining the steps to be taken for the implementation of IPv6 as well as the formation of the India IPv6 Task force. China and Japan were thought to be light years ahead of everybody else. But in the end, it was the might of the American Content Industry that tipped the scales. They added the needed momentum to the US Federal procurement policies that got the supply side seriously moving over the last couple of years, including equipment, software and network service providers.

This summer will have delighted IPv6 watchers as a growing number of sites allow them to witness the evolution of the global IP network and its constituent parts in quasi real time. APNIC IPv6 measurements make it easy to compare and track the relative rankings based on AS numbers and geographies. This is complemented by a most interesting site that tracks the progress on the content side identifying who in the Alexa 10,000 supports IPv6. A cross reference, with the Alexa ranking proper, ferrets out who talks and who walks the walk. A cursory look just showed 5 of the Alexa top 10 ranked sites in the world providing access in both IPv4 and IPv6.  They are the top four, Google, Facebook, Youtube and Yahoo as well as number six, Wikipedia.

Google stats and more recently Akamai also give a good appreciation of the state of IPv6 while the world’s premier internet exchange, AMS-IX in Amsterdam, continues to provide relevant readings of the IPv6 traffic accumulating in the global IP bloodstream.  By now, most major ISP’s also track IPv6 traffic within their networks more seriously or have at least allocated some money to upgrade their tools. In India, Indian Telecom Secretary R Chandrashekhar stated that all government websites will be IPv6-compatible by December this year and for the country as a whole, the roadmap for transitioning to IPv6 is by 2020.

When the IETF crowd gathered in Vancouver in late July, participants had the chance to attend a bellwether ISOC-sponsored IPv6 panel that included including inter alia Google, Akamai and Comcast. To see Verizon Wireless listed in the top IPv6 ranking reflected the break-neck pace of deployment of LTE and the astonishing growth of Mobile Broadband. This was gratifying as we suggested some time ago that LTE could eventually be a key catalyst for IPv6 adoption and growth.

Who leads in Asia and elsewhere at this point in time?  With daily ranking changes, best to consult the APNIC site.

Taken together, these developments have made it clear - this summer of 2012, IPv6 discovered adulthood.