On 8 June 2011, over 400 organizations from around the world participated in a global IPv6 functionality test. The question is what did we learn? What did we gain?
Simply put: the IPv6 “boogie monster” doesn’t exist. IPv6 works, and works very well. client-side/residential adoption rates are still very low. However (as seen below), the amount of IPv6 penetration in online content (web sites, Internet-facing applications, DNS, etc) is skyrocketing! Take a look at these graphs on the intense IPv6 traffic spike:
Also, IPv6 traffic spiked to about 1 Gbps. See below, courtesy of Hurricane Electric.
The amount of problems expected during World IPv6 Day were very low. There were some connectivity problems. In fact, the only real issues reported had to do with Path MTU issues. Once server MTU setting were lowered (because of tunneling connections) all was well. This too could be seen as a problem. The amount of tunneling compared to native IPv6 traffic was about 2/3 higher. See this breakdown from Arbor Networks. Basically the big winners on connectivity are 6to4 and Teredo.
So what does all this mean anyway? Are we any better off than we were before? Basically yes. The industry needed this. They needed a global exercise to convince them that moving to IPv6 won’t be an issue. There are already plans in the works to make it bigger and longer. Possibly later this year!
