Starlink Helps Eight More Nations Pass 50% IPv6 Adoption (theregister.com) 54
Eight nations have surpassed 50% IPv6 deployment since June 2024, bringing the total number of countries in the majority IPv6 club to 21, according to the Internet Society. Brazil, Guatemala, Hungary, Japan, Mexico, Puerto Rico, Sri Lanka, and Tuvalu all crossed the threshold over the past year.
Tuvalu's adoption coincided with the arrival of Elon Musk's Starlink satellite broadband service, which operates as IPv6-only. The Internet Society's Pulse platform found no IPv6 deployment in the Pacific nation in June 2024, but Starlink now holds 88% market share there and 59% of Tuvalu's internet connections use IPv6.
France moved from third place to tie with India for the global lead at 73% IPv6 deployment. Japan rebounded from 49% to 55%, returning to the 50% club after dropping below the mark in mid-2024. Puerto Rico climbed from 49% to 53%. Thailand appears positioned to join next at 49% deployment, followed by Estonia at 46% and the United Kingdom at 45%.
Tuvalu's adoption coincided with the arrival of Elon Musk's Starlink satellite broadband service, which operates as IPv6-only. The Internet Society's Pulse platform found no IPv6 deployment in the Pacific nation in June 2024, but Starlink now holds 88% market share there and 59% of Tuvalu's internet connections use IPv6.
France moved from third place to tie with India for the global lead at 73% IPv6 deployment. Japan rebounded from 49% to 55%, returning to the 50% club after dropping below the mark in mid-2024. Puerto Rico climbed from 49% to 53%. Thailand appears positioned to join next at 49% deployment, followed by Estonia at 46% and the United Kingdom at 45%.
We really need to push IPv6 adoption (Score:1)
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Your UID would indicate that you may not have been alive when the internet was created and thus don't understand the concept of end-to-end network connectivity that underpins it. The fact that parts of the internet functions without unique IP addresses isn't in support of your point. There are serious and badly broken kludges that we have implemented to make that work, and in doing so it has concentrated power to corporations.
Ever wonder why everything needs a cloud? It's because you can't communicate direc
Re: We really need to push IPv6 adoption (Score:2)
We have made it work, but it is costing us dearly. End-to-end addressability is fundamental to the original design of the internet. It enables any two nodes to communicate directly without needing a third party to broker the connection. For example, decades ago two people could play a video game over the internet without needing a 3rd-party server. IPv4 exhaustion and widespread use of NAT broke the model, handing control over to centralized services. So today, my cell phone can't ping your cell phone wi
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Oh, and just to add one more thing . Some network protocols just fundamentally can't work under NAT. Ex: FTP. So party of the reason this seems to worn is because we changed the way we design protocols to be NAt compatible. That's dumb. The Internet should just work.
Cisco (Score:4, Interesting)
Cisco will never end ipv4. Not anytime in the near or mid future, at least. The industrial vertical makes up a big chunk of their profit nowadays, and a large number of companies are running old hardware on plant floors. Think million dollar stamping presses and injection molding machines and CNC mills that run on OS/2 and Windows NT. These things must be networked to support the production execution system, coordinating with conveyors, robots, PLCs, inventory systems, SPC and inspection systems, etc...
It's the same reason a company still sells a PDP-11 emulator.
https://www.stromasys.com/solu... [stromasys.com]
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Gear (Score:4, Informative)
Yeah but those systems shouldn't be connected to the open internet at all. Even if you don't want to airgap them, they should be behind a network topology that prevents them from connecting out freely, or accepting random connections inward.
It's not about connecting to the open internet. The OP was talking about Cisco completely dropping ipv4 support. Cisco is a major supplier of industrial ethernet switches and routers, so that isn't going to happen. These industrial machines use ipv4 to talk to each other, and it *has* to be ipv4 because a lot of them predate the ipv6 standard, and there is no upgrade path to enable ipv6 support.
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The OP was talking about Cisco completely dropping ipv4 support.
The OP was talking about Cisco ending production of IPv4-only devices, not dropping support for IPv4. And I agree. In my opinion, we need a government mandate to end IPv4 on the Internet. It no longer serves a useful purpose outside the LAN.
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Cisco will never end ipv4.
That's not what the GP said. He said "IPv4 only equipment". I agree with you Cisco won't ever end IPv4 support, and honestly no device should do so. But in 2025 *new* devices not supporting IPv6 should be banned from connecting to outside networks. There's zero reason to be dual stack these days, especially since doing so will give your critical equipment some much needed life in the form of 4-6 gateways and routing.
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*not to be. There's zero reason not to be dual stack these days.
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Because you probably want to connect from your home network to places on the Internet.
The way that works is that the machine on your network sends an IP packet with the remote machine's IP in the header. The src/dest address fields in the header of v4 packets are too small to fit a v6 address (which is sort of the whole reason we needed a new protocol in the first place), so this requires a revised header format that has enough space, i.e. v6 packets.
Nobody is saying that your home network can't use v4, it
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For an airgapped network sure, you can continue using whatever antiquated protocol you want - NetBEUI, DECNet, IPX/SPX, Vines etc.
If you're going to provide Internet access at all you really need IPv6. You can get away with IPv6-only and provide access to legacy resources through NAT64. Most legacy networks don't have full dual stack and are encumbered by NAT44 anyway so the single stack setup is easier. If you have a legacy only network encumbered by NAT you're going to find increasing numbers of things ar
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Why can't my home setup use IPv4?
No one said it can't. The OP said IPv4 only equipment should be EOL'd and IPv4 allocations should be revoked. Your home network doesn't have an IPv4 allocation (I suspect), it uses a private reserved space.
There are tons of cases where an isolated IPv4 setup with static addresses is simpler to setup and troubleshoot than an IPv6 network.
One of the more interesting things about this argument is that I frequently find when home networks do have a problem with IPv4, a simple ping still goes through, ... to perfectly fine resolving IPv6 addresses. It's a curious result of people being scared of IPv6. The setup process for IPv6 itself is virt
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That doesn't show a local DNS server. It shows local machines using mDNS, which the typical home user does have.
It's actually quite common for home routers to run a local DNS server (dnsmasq integrates one and is very common on Linux-based routers). I don't know if it's enough to qualify for "typical", but it's not that unusual for home users to have a real DNS server running too, not just mDNS.
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If you don't know what the .local multicast DNS (mDNS) is then it shows that you are in fact a typical home user, and don't have a clue what is going on. Here's a hint: I didn't even type .local when I pinged it.
That's how transparent the modern networks are to users. They just work and do their thing in the background without anyone setting up anything or changing any setting. You too use mDNS at home (unless you're running a 15 year old OS) , and you don't even know it.
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The push is ongoing, but the general consensus is: (Score:2)
It's odd but people like numbers they can remember for 2 minutes while they walk between machines.
We also don't really need everyone's toaster, can opener, and vibrator accessible to the internet.
All they really needed to do was add a country prefix number like the phone system to expand ipv4, instead ipv6 went all complicated and stuff.
127.0.0.1 vs eafd:45ac:5820:ffad:dead:beef::0 -- really? (apologies if that actually breaks out to a connectable address)
This (Score:3)
The human factor is something the people who devised IP6 completely ignored (or didn't even understand). A lot of network setup and troubleshooting requires knowing the numeric IP address , good luck with even trying to even write down an IP6 address, never mind remember it.
"All they really needed to do was add a country prefix number like the phone system"
Quite. A 16 bit value would have done it and for IP4 would have been zero and ignored, anything else you add it to the front, maybe like 1234:240.0.0.1 ,
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It's odd but people like numbers they can remember for 2 minutes while they walk between machines.
If you're using IP addresses directly you're doing it wrong. DNS exists for a reason. ::1 ::2 ::3 etc - if memorising addresses is your thing then choose an addressing sch
Aside from that...
v6 has a more sensible hierarchical approach, you have a prefix which in any business environment is going to be static - remembering that 2001:db8:: is your prefix isn't hard and then the whole company uses the same prefix.
Individual host addresses *can* be randomly generated using 64 bits, but they can just as easily be
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If you're using IP addresses directly you're doing it wrong.
Then why does every IP on the planet need to be unique? Sounds like IPv4 is plenty for local networks.
I guess you've never heard of a firewall.
The problem isn't me, but most people have never heard of a firewall and have no understanding of why it should be enabled. They just want their toaster to be accessible while at work (for whatever reason).
You'd also introduce new problems with a country prefix, like how to anycast something thats hosted in multiple countries etc.
Then you are doing it wrong using IPs, you just said that is what DNS is for...
And the home IP example was used instead of a random IP that is probably already in use due there being a shortage and all
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If you're using IP addresses directly you're doing it wrong.
Then why does every IP on the planet need to be unique? Sounds like IPv4 is plenty for local networks.
It sounds like you have a fundamental gap in understanding of what an IP address is, how networks work, and what DNS is, and if you know what network traversal is then you seemingly must have ignored that in your comment too. Local networks don't exist in isolation. As soon as you're not in isolation the point is IPv4 is not plenty, that is evident by the fact there are more devices out there demanding internet access than we have IP address to provide them.
The problem isn't me, but most people have never heard of a firewall and have no understanding of why it should be enabled.
Why is that a problem? I have a firewall, actually
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If you're using IP addresses directly you're doing it wrong. DNS exists for a reason.
Aside from that...
The problem with these statements is you have no clue what they are doing with the addresses in the first place. Asserting other people are wrong to make a value judgement about the use of IPs when you don't have any information about their needs, environment or values is silly.
v6 has a more sensible hierarchical approach, you have a prefix which in any business environment is going to be static - remembering that 2001:db8:: is your prefix isn't hard and then the whole company uses the same prefix.
These notions of hierarchy are mostly BS in the real world. /64 assignments are typically allocated to LANs not companies and in any enterprise of any size TE overrides attempts to logically organize address space into neat hierarch
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All they really needed to do was add a country prefix number like the phone system
Not really. The phone system is based around variable-length addresses, whereas v4 is fixed to 32 bits. It's not just the packet format, but also related protocols like DNS and DHCP, and basically all software; everything stores v4 addresses in a fixed-width field. You can't just add a prefix onto v4 and have it work with everything like you can with phone numbers -- you need to do basically all the things v6 is doing to get longer addresses.
(And if you're doing that, it makes sense to add enough new addres
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All they really needed to do was add a country prefix number like the phone system to expand ipv4, instead ipv6 went all complicated and stuff.
Unlike phone networks IPv4 headers have a fixed address size. No matter what any attempt to change this and still maintain E2E addressability provably requires global changes to all systems. There were a shitload of tunneling hacks, they all sucked and could not be used in production.
I'm happy the hacks lost out. IPv6 over the Internet is really just 96 more bits with some IPv4 era garbage (per-hop fragmentation, checksums) removed.
127.0.0.1 vs eafd:45ac:5820:ffad:dead:beef::0 -- really?
You have control over at least the last 64-bits of the address. I was ab
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don't really need everyone's toaster... accessible to the internet.
What if Pop-Tarts icing was used to print a QR code on each Pop-Tart, and the Internet-connected toaster could read that, know how long to heat it, know to order more when the supply was low, and also add distance/steps to your health app? Wow, that'd be a great reason for IP6. %^)
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Cisco hasn't made legacy-only equipment for a long time. Pretty much everything they have supports v6, and anything that doesn't is long past EOL.
Puerto Rico is a nation? (Score:5, Insightful)
When did Puerto Rico leave the US?
Re: Puerto Rico is a nation? (Score:1)
Exactly. I was coming to say that.
Its a bit of a halfway house (Score:2)
Self governing except for foreign policy and defense AFAIK. Why doesn't it just become a state?
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One political party is dead-set against that happening.
Re: Its a bit of a halfway house (Score:2)
It's actually mostly both parties right now.
The problem is when their economy was going good, they likely could've gotten statehood, but they didn't want it.
When it started going bad 15 years ago, the majority started wanting statehood, but we won't give it to them.
Basically, they only want statehood when things are bad and they want to be bailed out.
And, we are only willing to give them statehood when they are doing well enough they won't be a drag on the other states.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wik... [wikipedia.org]
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When did Puerto Rico leave the US?
Puerto Rico was part of the USA? Someone should tell republican congress critters. They certainly act like it's a different country, and a 3rd world undesirable one at that.
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So somehow republicans not treating a part of the USA like a part of the USA is democrats fault? It'll never cease to amaze me how dumb the political discourse of you Americans is.
ISDN (Score:2)
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I had ISDN in the late 90's/early-2000's. Always on Internet at relative high speed and low latency. It was awesome at the time.
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you clearly don't understand what IPV6 is solving
yes, ipv4 works, but is harder and harder to manage and you have fewer IPv4 available, so their cost is higher and higher
ipv6 have much better traffic control and even having a little higher header, it is usually faster and more reliable than ipv4... and you got MANY more IPs. Those IPs are also easier to manage
The problem is that there are ISP that are lazy and keep being ipv4 only, but most major services are already ipv6 and if you get dual stack, you prob
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The problem IPv6 is solving isn't a problem today, because the problem IPv6 is solving is no longer workable.
People hated NAT because it puts up a basic stateful firewall between endpoints. And we needed that because we don't have enough IPv4 addresses.
IPv6 was to preserve that end to end connectivity, and not have to do all sorts of hacky workarounds like FTP proxies, port forwarding and other such things like STUN. It was also to make IPSec practical and workable.
But how much of that is true now? You don'
What will come first? (Score:2)
Fusion power reactors?
Fully self driving cars?
Lasting world peace?
Getting completely off IPv4?
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ISP efforts have been embarrassing (Score:2)
When I moved to Europe I was given an IPv6 address and a CGNAT'd IPv4 that broke much of what I did with my home servers. So switch to a business plan, easy right? Except my ISP could not offer me a business plan with an IPv6 address. I literally had the option of paying a lot more for a fixed IPv4 and *NO* IPv6, or have broken IPv4 and working IPv6.
10 fucking years it took for them to resolve this. It was late 2024 when I finally got a public IPv6 address on that business plan.
Now if only Vodaphone would f
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It's the same in a lot of places - legacy traffic is through CGNAT unless you pay (sometimes a LOT) extra. If you want any kind of home server you have to do it over v6. Also makes it much easier if you have more than one device since you can access them directly rather than having to mess with non standard ports or proxies etc.
Vodafone are a mixed bag - depends what country you're in. They have v6 in india, portugal, germany etc while in some other countries they don't.
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Confirming that vodafone have a working ipv6 setup for several years in Portugal
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Indeed, but the whole issue I initially presented was the combination of the two cases. If I want to access my home cloud from my phone then it's a problem that one ISP only supports IPv6 and the other doesn't support it at all. And attempting to keep a permanent VPN running on my phone was a failure.
The Vodaphone thing is interesting. Yeah they are a mixed bag, but typically you assume that countries highly ranked in internet speeds and access are generally technically ahead. Germany's internet is abysmal.
Headline apparently written by a Musk fanboi* (Score:2)
Story title: "Starlink Helps Eight More Nations Pass 50% IPv6 Adoption"
Actual story text: only mentions Starlink in association with Tuvalu - which is, by far, the least-consequential place mentioned.
*Apparently a few still exist, somehow
Puerto Rico (Score:2)
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sorry, but it is not listed as a USA state, nor you can vote for USA elections... so not a USA state
Google/chrome can fix this if they want (Score:3)
Google/chrome can fix this if they want
Chrome and chrome based browsers are all over the place. They changed the plain http to https in a few years. just by pushing https as the default.
They can do the same for IPv6. If a site can't be reach via IPv6, add a snail to the URL. Site owners would quickly start deploying the IPv6, if not already (a 5min setup with cloudflare can enable all sites with both ipv4 and ipv6, while of course, be dependent of a external entity)
For ISPs, people will start to complain, specially if they see friends without the snail icon. Perception of a problem is more important than the problem in many cases. ISPs without IPv6 would start to be looked as bad because they are "slow" and would finally move forward
Chrome can even use a tooltip where it can report if the snail is due to the local ISP (test the client), the remote server (does it have a AAAA record?) or in between (if both sides have ipv6 but it fails, report as a transit problem)
pressuring both the ISP and servers, the few backbones without IPv6 would quickly fix that too, but the main problem is still ISP
Even on LANs IPv6 would be great (Score:2)
I work for a company that makes large industrial machines. Some of the machines are, themselves, networks. They have motors and sensors and encoders and PID controllers and more. But too many of those devices assume ipv4, as do the corporate networks they live behind. So we have to assign all the embedded devices IPv4 addresses that don't conflict with the corporate s network, then apply NAT. It is overcomplicated, and so I can't remotely monitor the devices. To solve this there are a gzillion 3rd-party com