India continues to lead in IPv6 expansion with a 61.23% adoption rate globally

• According to Google’s statistics for IPv6 adoption, India is currently in the lead globally.
• It has achieved an IPv6 adoption rate of 61.23%.
• IPv6 is the latest version of the Internet Protocol, and it will eventually succeed IPv4.

More than half of India has migrated to IPv6 (Internet Protocol version 6), the latest version of the Internet Protocol. India currently ranks the highest for IPv6 adoption globally, according to the latest statistics collected by Google. India is leading with a 61.23% adoption rate of IPv6 so far, followed by Malaysia (54.76%) and French Guiana (52.34%). The IPv6 adoption rate has been seeing a steady increase currently hovering around 36% globally.

India ranking the highest for IPv6 adoption means that here users experience very few issues when connecting to IPv6-enabled websites, according to the Google data. The government of India has been quite active in the adoption of IPv6 across the country. It released the first roadmap of IPv6 adoption back in 2010 which required all major services providers to offer IPv6 services, and also state and central government departments to upgrade to IPv6. It later released a second version of the IPv6 roadmap in 2013 which focused on the futuristic roles of IPv6, and a phased transition from IPv4 to IPv6. It has also made revisions to the timelines for IPv6 adoption among the important stakeholders.

What is IPv6?

IPv6 is the more advanced version of the Internet Protocol which will eventually replace IPv4. Every device connected to the internet requires its own IP address to communicate with other devices. IPv6 is the sixth revision of the Internet Protocol and it was created in 1998.

Why the transition from IPv6 to IPv4?

The main reason behind moving from IPv4 to IPv6 is the lack of addresses the former supports. IPv4 uses a 32-bit addressing system that currently supports around 4.3 billion addresses which is clearly not enough given the number of devices and internet users growing around the world. This is where IPv6 comes in as it uses a 128-bit addressing system which makes it possible to support more devices. In numbers, IPv6 can support up to 340 trillion trillion devices which is 2 to the 128th power for math geeks.

The difference between IPv4 and IPv6 can be seen in the numbering system. IPv4 uses four sets of one to three-digit numbers (152.17.234.1) whereas IPv6 uses eight groups of four hexadecimal digits (2001:0db8:85a3:0000:0000:8a2e:0370:7334) that are separated by colons.

IPv6 comes with more benefits over IPv4 such as better performance, auto configuration of devices and increased security.

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