The deployment of IPv6, the latest version of the Internet Protocol (IP), has been in progress since the mid-2000s. IPv6 was designed as the successor protocol for IPv4 with an expanded addressing space. IPv4, which has been in use since 1982, is in the final stages of exhausting its unallocated address space, but still carries most Internet traffic.
By 2011, all major operating systems in use on personal computers and server systems had production-quality IPv6 implementations. Mobile telephone networks present a large deployment field for Internet-connected devices in which voice is provisioned as a voice over IP (VoIP) service. In 2009, the US cellular operator Verizon released technical specifications for devices to operate on its 4G networks. The specification mandates IPv6 operation according to the 3GPP Release 8 Specifications (March 2009), and deprecates IPv4 as an optional capability.
, Google's statistics shows use of IPv6 by its global user base at around 45–50% depending on the day of the week (greater on weekends). Adoption is uneven across countries and Internet service providers. Countries including France, Germany and India now run the majority of their traffic to Google over IPv6, with other countries including the United States, Brazil and Japan at around 50%. Russia and Australia have over 30% adoption, while China has less than 5% and some countries such as Sudan and Turkmenistan have less than 1% IPv6 adoption.
Deployment tools and evaluation
Rapid deployment tools Tools such as 6rd, conceived by Rémi Després, have been developed to enable IPv6 rapid deployment.
Statistics and monitoring Google publishes statistics on IPv6 adoption among Google users. A graph of IPv6 adoption since 2008 and a map of IPv6 deployment by country are available.
APNIC publishes statistics for worldwide adoption of IPv6 over time. This also includes per-country data.
A global view into the history of the growing IPv6 routing tables can be obtained with the SixXS Ghost Route Hunter. This tool provided a list of all allocated IPv6 prefixes until 2014 and marks with colors the ones that were actually being announced into the Internet BGP tables. When a prefix was announced, it means that the ISP at least can receive IPv6 packets for their prefix.
The integration of IPv6 on existing network infrastructure may be monitored from other sources, for example: Regional Internet registries (RIR) IPv6 prefix allocation IPv6 transit services Japan ISP IPv6 services
On 28 March 2026, IPv6 traffic to Google exceeded 50% for the first time, marking a historic milestone in the transition away from IPv4. This followed years of steady growth, with global adoption standing at approximately 43% in early 2025 before accelerating. Country-level adoption varies widely, with France (73%), India (72%), and Saudi Arabia (65%) among the leaders, while Italy (17%), Spain (10%), and Egypt (4%) lag significantly behind.
Testing, evaluation, and certification A few organizations are involved with international IPv6 test and evaluation, ranging from the United States Department of Defense to the University of New Hampshire.
The US DoD Joint Interoperability Test Command DoD IPv6 Product Certification Program University of New Hampshire InterOperability Laboratory involvement in the IPv6 Ready Logo Program
Major milestones YearMajor development and availability milestones1996IPv6 support in the Linux kernel was originally developed by Pedro Roque and integrated into mainline at the end of 1996, which was one of the earliest implementations of an IPv6 stack in the world.6bone (an IPv6 virtual network for testing) is started.1997October 31, 1997 IBM's AIX 4.3 is the first commercial platform supporting IPv6.Also in 1997, Early Adopter Kits for DEC's operating systems, Tru64 and OpenVMS, are made available.1998Microsoft Research releases its first experimental IPv6 stack. This support is not intended for use in a production environment.1999In February, the IPv6 Forum is founded by the IETF Deployment WG to drive deployment worldwide. This results in the creation of regional and local IPv6 Task Forces.1999Implementation of the first IPv6 tunnel broker, by Ivano Guardini that also contributed the RFC:3053, at CSELT.2000Production-quality BSD support for IPv6 becomes generally available in early to mid-2000 in FreeBSD, OpenBSD, and NetBSD via the KAME project.Microsoft releases an IPv6 technology preview version for Windows 2000 in March 2000.Sun Solaris supports IPv6 in Solaris 8 in February.Compaq ships IPv6 with Tru64.2001In January, Compaq ships IPv6 with OpenVMS.Cisco Systems introduces IPv6 support on Cisco IOS routers and L3 switches.HP introduces IPv6 with HP-UX 11i v1.On April 23, 2001, the European Commission launches the European IPv6 Task Force2002Microsoft Windows NT 4.0 and Windows 2000 SP1 have limited IPv6 support for research and testing since at least 2002.Microsoft Windows XP (2001) supports IPv6 for developmental purposes. In Windows XP SP1 (2002) and Windows Server 2003, IPv6 is included as a core networking technology, suitable for commercial deployment.IBM z/OS supports IPv6 since version 1.4 (general availability in September 2002).2003Apple Mac OS X v10.3 "Panther" (2003) supports IPv6 which is enabled by default.2004In July, ICANN announces that IPv6 address records for the Japan (jp) and Korea (kr) country code top-level domain nameservers are visible in the DNS root server zone files with serial number 2004072000. The IPv6 records for France (fr) are added later. This makes IPv6 DNS publicly operational.2005Linux 2.6.12 removes experimental status from its IPv6 implementation.2007Microsoft Windows Vista (2007) supports IPv6 which is enabled by default.Apple's AirPort Extreme 802.11n base station includes an IPv6 gateway in its default configuration. It uses 6to4 tunneling and manually configured static tunnels. (Note: 6to4 was disabled by default in later firmware revisions.)On March 8, 2007, IPv6 Forum, Stealth Communications and CounterPath Solutions, announced worldwide VoIP interoperability using IPv6 and Asterisk (PBX)2008On February 4, 2008, IANA adds AAAA records for the IPv6 addresses of six root name servers. With this transition, it is now possible to resolve domain names using only IPv6.On March 12, 2008, the IETF does an hour-long IPv4 blackout at its meeting as an opportunity to capture informal experience data to inform protocol design work going forward; this led to many fixes in operating systems and applications.On May 27, 2008, the European Commission publish their Action Plan for the deployment of Internet Protocol version 6 (IPv6) in Europe, with the aim of making IPv6 available to 25% of European users by 2010.2011On June 8, 2011, the Internet Society, in conjunction with several large companies and organizations, held World IPv6 Day, a global 24-hour test of IPv6.2012On June 6, 2012, the Internet Society, in conjunction with many large companies and organizations, held World IPv6 Launch Day, a global permanent deployment of IPv6.2013On November 22, 2013, the Xbox One becomes the first dedicated video game console from a major company to support IPv6.
Operating system support
By 2011, all major operating systems in use on personal computers and server systems had production-quality IPv6 implementations.Comparison of IPv6 support in operating systems Comparison of IPv6 support in operating systems Microsoft Windows has supported IPv6 since Windows 2000, and in production-ready state beginning with Windows XP. Windows Vista and later have improved IPv6 support. macOS since Panther (10.3), Linux 2.6, FreeBSD, and Solaris also have mature production implementations. Some implementations of the BitTorrent peer-to-peer file transfer protocol make use of IPv6 to avoid NAT issues common for IPv4 private networks.
Browser support
, all major web browsers support the Happy Eyeballs mechanism, in which they attempt to first create an IPv6 connection to dual stack endpoints wherever an IPv6 address is available as an option, falling back to IPv4 only if IPv6 connection is not immediately possible. This eliminates the problem where IPv6 connectivity problems would make it less reliable than IPv4 in some cases, dissuaded service operators for rolling out IPv6. This has greatly increased IPv6 adoption.
Government encouragement In the early 2000s, governments increasingly required support for IPv6 in new equipment. The US government, for example, specified in 2005 that the network backbones of all federal agencies had to be upgraded to IPv6 by June 30, 2008; this was completed before the deadline. In addition, the US government in 2010 required federal agencies to provide native dual-stacked IPv4/IPv6 access to external/public services by 2012, and internal clients were to utilize IPv6 by 2014. On November 19, 2020, the United States Office of Management and Budget (OMB) issued the latest US federal government IPv6-only policy in its memorandum (M-21-07) directing all federal government agencies to complete at least 80% of the transition from IPv4 to the single stack of IPv6 by 2025. Progress on the US government's external facing IPv6 services is tracked by NIST. The government of the People's Republic of China implemented a five-year plan for deployment of IPv6 called the China Next Generation Internet (see below).
Coexistence with IPv4 On 7 March 2013, the Internet Engineering Task Force created a working group for IPv4 sunset in preparation for protocol changes that could be used to support sunset/shutdown of remnant IPv4 networks. However, in May 2018 this working group was closed as no immediate work could be identified due to the slow transition to IPv6.
The Internet Engineering Task Force expects IPv6 to coexist with IPv4 as it is considered impractical to fully transition to IPv6 in the short term. The coexistence is expected to be based on dual-stack, tunneling or translation mechanisms. Dual-stack implementations required two parallel logical networks, increasing cost and complexity of the network. IPv4 networks are expected to slowly transition into segmented subnetworks using IPv4 Residual Deployment.
The slow transition to IPv6 has caused significant resentment in the Internet community.
As a result, many larger enterprises, such as Microsoft, are transitioning to phasing out IPv4 and moving towards IPv6 Single-Stack within the company. In a 2019 blog, the company describes their heavily translated IPv4 network as "potentially fragile", "operationally challenging", and with regard to dual-stack operations (i.e. those running IPv4 and IPv6 simultaneously) "complex".
Geoff Huston wrote an article for APNIC in late 2024 suggesting that, while linear extrapolation suggested that the IPv6 transition might eventually be finished by 2045, it was a possibility that it might end up coexisting with IPv4 indefinitely because of changes in the Internet architecture from being a global application-agnostic network to one primarily focused on delivering services hosted from nearby data centres.
Deployment by country and region Algeria AnwarNet (www.anwarnet.dz); AfriNIC has allocated range of IPv6 address space to AnwarNet. AnwarNet started IPV6 services in 2011.
Australia AARNet completed network AARNet 3, a high-speed network connecting academic and research customers in the major metropolitan centres, with international links to major ISPs in the US, Asia, and Europe. One of the design goals was to support both IPv4 and IPv6 protocols equally. It also supports multicast routing and jumbo frames. IPv6 Now Pty Ltd introduced the first commercial-grade IPv6 tunnel broker service in Australia on April 30, 2008. Also, in June 2008, IPv6Now introduced the first dual-stacked (IPv4 & IPv6) web hosting service.