Global IPv6 Deployment Progress Report

By Mike Leber

This page was developed in order to provide metrics for global IPv6 deployment. These statistics are updated daily. Please send questions, comments, or bugs to mleber@he.net

The tools for this report were developed while working on a paper titled "Going Native" about Hurricane's experience of adding extensive native IPv6 peering as a result of a core router and backbone upgrade.

Top Level Domains with IPv6 support

The root nameservers contain NS records listing the nameservers for the Top Level Domains (TLDs) and A and AAAA glue records to get to those nameservers. Top level domains include domain name suffixes such as .com .net .org .us .ca etc. Each TLD has specific authorative nameservers. To support IPv6 these nameservers should: Generated by parsing the root zonefile to get a list of TLDs and their associated nameservers, querying for AAAA records for the names of those nameservers and checking for AAAA records in the root zone for those nameservers.

Root Zone Downloaded: Thu Jul 2 01:00:02 2009
Root Zone Processed: Thu Jul 2 08:46:00 2009

Top Level Domains (TLDs): 280

TLDs with IPv6 nameservers: 219
Percentage of TLDs with IPv6 nameservers: 78.2%

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TLDs with nameservers with IPv6 glue in the root zone: 168
Percentage of TLDs that have nameservers with IPv6 glue in the root zone: 60.0%

ac ad ae aero af ag al am an ao aq ar arpa as asia at au az be bg bi biz bm br bt bw bz ca cat cd cf cg ch ci cl cn com cu cv cy cz de dk do dz edu ee eg es et eu fi fj fm fr ga gb ge gg gh gi gn gr gt gw gy hk hn ht hu id ie il in info int io is it je jm jp ke kg kh ki km kn kr lb lc li lk lr ls lt lu lv ly md me mk ml mn mobi mr ms mt museum mw mx my mz na net ng nl no np nr nz org ph pl pm pn ps pt py re ro rs rw sa sc se sg sh si sk sn so st sz tel tf th tj tm tn tp travel tw tz ua ug uk us uy va vc ve vn wf yt yu za zm

Registered domains with AAAA records

Generated by querying for A (IPv4) and AAAA (IPv6) records for all domains in the listed TLDs (top level domains). Demonstrates growing use of AAAA records for the primary domain name of websites and other Internet services. (Note: we would like to add any TLDs that will allow us access for daily downloads.)
     TLD   domains         A      AAAA    A-glue AAAA-glue                downloaded                   processed
     com  81052432  70753661   1108263   1569932       306  (Thu Jul  2 01:37:47 2009)  (Thu Jul  2 05:40:15 2009)
     net  12297094  10321031    137149    324256       469  (Thu Jul  2 01:57:27 2009)  (Thu Jul  2 06:13:05 2009)
     org   7619146   6424786     79695    208781       202  (Thu Jul  2 01:57:43 2009)  (Thu Jul  2 06:44:50 2009)
    info   5167144   4113565     84090    130125       151  (Thu Jul  2 01:57:55 2009)  (Thu Jul  2 07:03:24 2009)
     biz   2024292   1629583     21926     20462         0  (Thu Jul  2 01:59:08 2009)  (Thu Jul  2 07:40:55 2009)
      us   1573796   1183925     27234     14282         0  (Thu Jul  2 01:58:32 2009)  (Thu Jul  2 07:58:12 2009)
      ca   1207784    946162      3300     15398         0  (Fri Apr  3 01:58:07 2009)  (Thu Jul  2 08:26:52 2009)
    mobi    842230    682297     35053      4065        25  (Thu Jul  2 01:58:04 2009)  (Thu Jul  2 07:23:34 2009)
      no    422532    309340       144      1383         3  (Fri Apr  3 02:10:44 2009)  (Thu Jul  2 08:36:52 2009)
    name    298492    228911      4122      4660         0  (Thu Jul  2 01:59:19 2009)  (Thu Jul  2 08:04:43 2009)
    asia    211730    150788      3728      1402        24  (Thu Jul  2 01:59:12 2009)  (Thu Jul  2 08:01:24 2009)
      sk    181975    131511      9853      3590         0  (Thu Jul  2 02:03:53 2009)  (Thu Jul  2 08:39:36 2009)
      tc     49420      7705       112       515         0  (Thu Jul  2 02:03:56 2009)  (Thu Jul  2 08:43:42 2009)
      gd     41628      1483         3       196         0  (Thu Jul  2 02:00:40 2009)  (Thu Jul  2 08:30:40 2009)
      kz     34550     23728         3     49041         0  (Thu Jul  2 02:03:20 2009)  (Thu Jul  2 08:33:52 2009)
    aero     31220      4219         9       275         0  (Thu Jul  2 01:57:59 2009)  (Thu Jul  2 07:05:25 2009)
      am     29843      9557        62       546         4  (Thu Jul  2 01:59:27 2009)  (Thu Jul  2 08:20:45 2009)
      ma     29620      9861         5     30866         0  (Thu Jul  2 02:03:47 2009)  (Thu Jul  2 08:34:42 2009)
      ac     14828      8937         4       224         0  (Mon Jun 29 02:16:59 2009)  (Thu Jul  2 08:05:03 2009)
      ag     13393      9577        53       292         0  (Thu Jul  2 01:59:22 2009)  (Thu Jul  2 08:20:12 2009)
      to     13311     10465        32      1250         0  (Thu Jul  2 02:04:02 2009)  (Thu Jul  2 08:44:27 2009)
      ge     12083      9936         9       191         1  (Thu Jul  2 02:00:39 2009)  (Thu Jul  2 08:30:58 2009)
      vg      8546      6382        66       338         0  (Thu Jul  2 02:04:15 2009)  (Thu Jul  2 08:45:39 2009)
      ba      8425      7023         2      6418         0  (Thu Jul  2 01:59:36 2009)  (Thu Jul  2 08:21:48 2009)
      gt      7120      5110         4       458         2  (Thu Jul  2 02:01:01 2009)  (Thu Jul  2 08:31:50 2009)
      pe      6672      3608         1        96         0  (Thu Jul  2 02:03:08 2009)  (Thu Jul  2 08:37:19 2009)
      lk      5988      3460         1      1518         0  (Thu Jul  2 02:02:03 2009)  (Thu Jul  2 08:34:20 2009)
      sc      5544      4530         4       191         0  (Sun Jun 28 02:02:28 2009)  (Thu Jul  2 08:38:21 2009)
      jm      4696      1948         3      4676         0  (Thu Jul  2 02:02:01 2009)  (Thu Jul  2 08:33:00 2009)
      bd      3689      2176         1      5293         0  (Thu Jul  2 01:59:35 2009)  (Thu Jul  2 08:22:21 2009)
      ug      3233      1958         1        77         0  (Thu Jul  2 02:04:13 2009)  (Thu Jul  2 08:44:53 2009)
      kg      2988      2193         1       216         0  (Thu Jul  2 02:01:34 2009)  (Thu Jul  2 08:33:25 2009)
      sh      2774      2161         9        88         2  (Mon Jun 29 02:21:13 2009)  (Thu Jul  2 08:39:09 2009)
      io      2502      1954         4        68         0  (Mon Jun 29 02:19:14 2009)  (Thu Jul  2 08:32:27 2009)
      sn      2255       964         5       232         1  (Thu Jul  2 02:03:44 2009)  (Thu Jul  2 08:39:48 2009)
      lc      1614       443         1        31         0  (Thu Jul  2 02:02:01 2009)  (Thu Jul  2 08:34:01 2009)
      mw      1334       548         3         0         0  (Thu Jul  2 02:02:39 2009)  (Thu Jul  2 08:34:58 2009)
      cu       845       219         0       583         9  (Thu Jul  2 02:00:18 2009)  (Thu Jul  2 08:27:24 2009)
      nf       653       444         2        12         0  (Thu Jul  2 02:02:53 2009)  (Thu Jul  2 08:35:07 2009)
      tn        52         5         0       369         2  (Fri Jun 19 01:06:43 2009)  (Thu Jul  2 08:44:07 2009)
      au        20         1         0        27         4  (Fri Apr  3 01:55:15 2009)  (Thu Jul  2 08:21:13 2009)

   total 113237493  97016155   1514957   2402423      1205

Total registered domains with AAAA records: 1514957

The really important number here is the total number of domains returning AAAA records. This tells you the number of registered domains that have added IPv6 for their primary domain, for the set of TLDs above, which is a partial listing based on what TLDs we could get access to. It does not include subdomains i.e. ipv6.google.com, which means our number is a lower bound and that the number of IPv6 enabled domains is even higher.

Top 1000 Usenet Servers with IPv6 support

Generated by parsing the top 1000 usenet servers (from Top 1000 Usenet Servers) and querying for A and AAAA records. Note: Due to how the usenet protocol works not every listed usenet server has a direct addresses (some usenet server names are not fully qualified domain names).

Top 1000 Downloaded: Wed Jul 1 19:30:32 2009
Top 1000 Processed: Thu Jul 2 08:46:21 2009

Top 1000 Usenet Servers: 1000
Top 1000 Usenet Servers with a direct IPv4 address: 724
Top 1000 Usenet Servers with a direct IPv6 address: 72
Percentage of top 1000 Usenet Servers with direct addresses with IPv6 support: 9.94%

Networks Running IPv6

We can measure the percentage of networks running IPv6 by comparing the set of ASes in the IPv6 routing table to those in the combined set of IPv4 and IPv6.

IPv4 and IPv6 RIBs Last Parsed: Thu Jul 2 00:10:30 PDT 2009

IPv4 ASes: 31901

IPv6 ASes: 1488

ASes using only IPv4: 30467

ASes using only IPv6: 54

ASes using IPv4 and IPv6: 1434

ASes using IPv4 or IPv6: 31955

Percentage of ASes (IPv4 or IPv6) running IPv6: 4.7%

IPv6 rDNS Nameservers running IPv6

One amusing measure of IPv6 deployment to ask the question: What percentage of IPv6 reverse DNS servers are reachable via IPv6?

(ping tests and dns queries run from a server on Hurricane Electric's IPv4 and IPv6 backbone in Fremont, California.)

IPv6 rDNS Nameservers Last Polled: Thu Jul 2 00:43:16 PDT 2009

IPv6 Prefixes: 1856

IPv6 rDNS Nameservers: 1739

IPv6 rDNS Nameservers with an IPv4 address: 1703

IPv6 rDNS Nameservers with an IPv6 address: 713

IPv6 rDNS Nameservers reachable via IPv4 (ping or dns): 1496

IPv6 rDNS Nameservers reachable via IPv6 (ping or dns): 610

IPv6 rDNS Nameservers reachable via IPv4 or IPv6: 1559

IPv6 rDNS Nameservers reachable via IPv4 and IPv6: 547

Percentage reachable IPv6 rDNS Nameservers reachable via IPv6: 39.1%

IPv6 Performance

Actually, the reason we looked at IPv6 reverse DNS servers was to get some hosts on both IPv6 and IPv4 so that we can compare IPv6 vs IPv4 latency.

IPv6 rDNS Nameservers where IPv6 is faster than IPv4 (by more than 1ms): 301

IPv6 rDNS Nameservers where IPv4 and IPv6 are the same speed (within 1ms): 77

IPv6 rDNS Nameservers where IPv4 is faster than IPv6 (by more than 1ms): 169

IPv6 rDNS nameservers where IPv6 is as fast or faster than IPv4 (within 1ms): 378

Percentage of IPv6 rDNS Nameservers where IPv6 is as fast or faster than IPv4 (within 1ms): 69.1%

Websites Running IPv6

A very quick way to measure IPv6 deployment for websites is just to check for a AAAA record in DNS.

Domains Last Polled: Thu Jul 2 00:12:05 PDT 2009

Top Websites

The Alexa Top 500 lists the most popular sites on the web.

Alexa Top 500 Last Parsed: Thu Jul 2 00:10:41 PDT 2009

Alexa Top 500 websites domains: 499

Alexa Top 500 websites listed incorrectly: 7

Alexa Top 500 websites with an IPv4 or IPv6 address: 492

Alexa Top 500 websites with an IPv6 address: 0

Percentage of Alexa Top 500 websites using IPv6: 0.0%