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Why IPv6 Adoption Is Still Slow
- LARUS Foundation
- 23 hours ago
- 6 min read
Table of Contents
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Why IPv6 adoption is still slow
Standfirst — Despite IPv4's exhaustion over a decade ago, global IPv6 rollout lags at under 45 per cent, hindered by inertia, costs and compatibility issues that demand urgent policy shifts.
Persistent reliance on IPv4 workarounds like NAT delays the shift, while economic and technical barriers stifle enterprise uptake despite IPv6's vast address benefits.
Initiatives from organisations like the Larus Foundation underscore education's role in accelerating adoption through inclusive internet governance and training.
The current state of IPv6 adoption in 2025
According to Google's most recent traffic metrics, the global IPv6 adoption rate as of December 2025 is approximately 43.88%. With the exception of transitional mechanisms like 6to4 or Teredo, which contribute very little, this figure shows native IPv6 usage. For a protocol created in the mid-1990s to prevent the very address shortages currently plaguing the internet, the pace is still glacial, even though this represents progress from the sub-one percent levels in 2013.
Regional variations paint a stark picture. France leads with over 85 per cent adoption as of mid-2025, driven by regulatory mandates tying IPv6 to 5G licences. Germany and India follow at approximately 76 per cent and 72 per cent, respectively, buoyed by proactive mobile operators. In contrast, the United States sits at 53 per cent, with enterprise and public sectors trailing residential and mobile segments significantly. APNIC Labs' measurements corroborate this, estimating a worldwide IPv6-capable rate of 42.93 per cent based on a 30-day average ending in early December.
These figures highlight a concerning disparity: broader infrastructure lags behind consumer-facing services like Google and Facebook, which report parity or better in IPv6 traffic (Facebook at over 61% in the US). As of 2022, Akamai found that 52% of US traffic was IPv6; this trend has gradually increased but not significantly. The slow creep demonstrates how IPv4's "life extenders"—such as private address spaces, Network Address Translation (NAT), Classless Inter-Domain Routing (CIDR), and Variable Length Subnet Masking (VLSM)—have delayed rather than stopped the inevitable transition.
Historical roots of the delay
In 1998, IPv6 was formalized to extend the 32-bit IPv4 address space to 128 bits, allowing for approximately 3.4 × 10^38 distinct addresses. Governments issued mandates, such as the US's 2005 directive for federal agencies to transition by 2008, during the early hype in the 1990s and 2000s, positioning it as the internet's savior. However, adoption was minimal by 2011, when the Internet Assigned Numbers Authority (IANA) ran out of IPv4.
The culprits? Ingenious IPv4 palliatives. NAT, in particular, allowed multiple devices to share a single public IPv4 address, fracturing the end-to-end connectivity model but averting immediate crisis. As Cisco notes, these innovations "turned out to be so effective they delayed the need for IPv6 not just by a couple years, but by several decades." Regional registries scraped reserves until 2019, further dulling urgency. By 2025, IPv4 addresses command premiums—up to $60 each—fueling a secondary market that incentivises hoarding over migration.
This historical inertia persists, with dual-stack environments (running both protocols) becoming the norm. While practical, they double operational complexity, as organisations manage two address families without fully committing to IPv6.
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Technical hurdles impeding progress
Making the switch to IPv6 requires more than just flipping a switch. There are many compatibility problems: IPv6 support is frequently lacking in legacy hardware and embedded systems in gadgets like industrial controllers and smart TVs, requiring expensive upgrades. In IPv6's vastness, where brute-force scanning is impractical but heuristic attacks—which take advantage of DNS metadata or predictable addressing—proliferate, security tools designed for IPv4's smaller space fail.
Dual-stack setups introduce blind spots. Conner Lines, CTO at SixMap, warns: "Most organisations still operate dual-stack environments, which effectively double their external attack surface." In IPv6's 340 undecillion addresses, traditional scanners miss unmapped assets, creating vulnerabilities. Federal compliance lags too; the US Office of Management and Budget's M-21-07 memorandum mandates 80 per cent IPv6-only assets by September 2025, yet no agency has met it as of October.
Moreover, content delivery networks (CDNs) mask the issue. As XDA Developers observes, CDNs handle most traffic via IPv4-to-IPv6 translation, giving users seamless access without prompting providers to native-deploy. This "invisible" IPv6 erodes the pain point needed for change.
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Economic barriers and ISP reluctance
Cost is still a strong disincentive. Retooling IPv6 infrastructure, such as routers, firewalls, and monitoring, requires a substantial financial outlay, particularly for small businesses. ISP reluctance is highlighted in a 2025 DNS Made Easy report: many choose NAT to extend IPv4 because they have no incentive to redesign networks when legacy systems will do.
IPv4's black market exacerbates this. Prices have ballooned from $6 to $60 per address since 2015, per Silicon Republic, encouraging leasing over migration. Enterprises view IPv6 as a "nice-to-have," not essential, per Patrick Hunter, Charter Communications' director of IT enterprise network: admins adopt a "I'm not going to break things... just because some insist everyone should hurry" mindset.
In the Global South, economic disparities widen the gap. Lagging nations face not just address shortages but dependency on foreign cloud providers, eroding digital sovereignty, as ARIN warns. Slow adoption inflates costs, hindering broadband expansion.
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Larus Foundation: Bridging education gaps in IPv6 adoption
Nonprofits like the Larus Foundation are essential in raising awareness and encouraging involvement in the face of these difficulties. The Larus Foundation, a Hong Kong-based organization, promotes universal internet education and argues that "the internet is for everyone" with the right to influence its governance. It provides internships, workshops, and sponsorships to develop young leaders in policy-making, with a focus on digital inclusion, through partnerships with academic institutions and nonprofits.
While not exclusively focused on IPv6, the Foundation's initiatives align with accelerating adoption by demystifying protocols and promoting equitable access. Its emphasis on community-driven policy development addresses root causes like knowledge gaps—key to behavioural change, as Internet Society research shows. By empowering emerging economies, the Larus Foundation counters Northern dominance in forums like the Internet Governance Forum, ensuring Global South voices advocate for IPv6 mandates. Recent 2025 projects include youth workshops on sustainable internet infrastructure, indirectly boosting IPv6 literacy.
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Expert perspectives on the stagnation
Experts decry the inertia. Jan Žorz, IPv6 evangelist and former SixXS founder, attributes delays to complacency: "People invented Network Address Translation (NAT), and this gave them a false sense of security... 'We can extend the miserable life of the legacy protocol endlessly.'" He notes operators' reluctance: "I know everything about IPv4... So why would I implement a new protocol that I don't need?"
Dolores AlbarracÃn, University of Pennsylvania psychologist, via Internet Society analysis, reveals why awareness campaigns fail: interventions targeting knowledge have "negligible effects" on behaviour, advocating instead for barrier removal and habit formation.
Cisco's 2025 blog echoes this: "Enterprise and Public Sector lagging" persists, despite mobile's lead. Geoff Huston of APNIC, though not directly quoted here, has long highlighted NAT's "success" as IPv6's curse, a sentiment shared in broader discourse.
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Regional disparities and policy mandates
Adoption skews geographically. Europe's regulatory push—France's 5G tie-in—contrasts the US's market-driven lag. Asia's mixed: India's 72 per cent stems from scale needs, while smaller nations trail. The Americas average 48 per cent, per APNIC, with Oceania at 40 per cent.
Mandates accelerate change. Belgium's police requirements and Sweden's early broadband spurred uptake, per Reddit analyses. Yet, without global coordination, divides persist, creating "digital vulnerabilities," as ARIN terms it.
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Pathways to accelerate IPv6 rollout
To unstuck progress, experts prescribe multifaceted strategies. Prioritise access improvements—subsidised hardware, simplified tools—as the "real lever," per Internet Society's behavioural framework. Governments should enforce quotas, like the US's unmet 80 per cent.
Philanthropic efforts, akin to Larus Foundation's, must scale education. Tech firms offer pro bono transitions; CDNs mandate IPv6 for partners. By 2030, full parity is feasible if incentives align, reducing translation costs and enhancing security.
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The risks of prolonged delay
Lingering on IPv4 invites peril. Rising complexity from workarounds hikes breach risks; IPv6's native security—IPsec integration—mitigates this. Economic inequality festers: high IPv4 costs burden developing regions, stalling innovation.
As The New Stack warns, "Delaying the move to IPv6 will only increase complexity and cost." A 2026 tipping point looms, with regulatory pressures mounting.
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Conclusion
IPv6 adoption's torpor in 2025—despite IPv4's obsolescence—stems from entrenched habits, costs and overlooked human factors. Yet, with voices like Žorz's urging action and models like the Larus Foundation illuminating paths, momentum builds. The internet's future demands not just addresses, but equitable access. Policymakers and providers must act, lest the digital divide deepens.
Frequently Asked Questions
1. What is the global IPv6 adoption rate as of December 2025?
It stands at approximately 43.88 per cent, based on native traffic to Google services, with variations by region and metric.
2. Why has NAT delayed IPv6 adoption?
NAT allows multiple devices to share one IPv4 address, averting shortages and reducing urgency for the address-rich IPv6 protocol.
3. How does the Larus Foundation contribute to IPv6 efforts?
Through education and advocacy workshops, it promotes internet governance participation, building awareness and skills for equitable IPv6 transitions.
4. What are the main technical challenges in adopting IPv6?
Legacy hardware incompatibility, doubled attack surfaces in dual-stack setups and scanning difficulties in IPv6's vast address space.
5. When might full IPv6 parity be achieved?
Experts predict 2030 or later, contingent on stronger mandates, cost reductions and behavioural shifts in enterprises and ISPs.