Akamai IPv6 World Day Statistics

• Exhaustion of IPv4 address space

  Regional Internet registries are now assigning their last few remaining IPv4 addresses from the final blocks allocated to them in February 2011.  This remaining address space is expected to be completely exhausted in 2012, though some regions of the world will run out earlier. Now moreso than ever, the need for organizations to transition to IPv6 has become critical, though the transition will occur gradually over the next several years.   With smart long-term planning, the upgrade process does not have to be daunting or disruptive.  However, Web-enabled businesses do need to be cautious when deploying IPv6 transition technologies to reach their audiences across a hybrid IPv4/IPv6 Internet. While it is not difficult to support IPv6 end users nominally, it can be far more challenging to do so with the levels of performance and reliability that users and online businesses have come to expect.

• Akamai is committed to help customers with a smooth transition to IPv6

  With Akamai, IPv4 sites will be able to take advantage of high performance, high availability IPv6 delivery without making significant changes to their origin infrastructures. Akamai has published an IPv6-focused whitepaper, entitled "IPv6: What the Transition Means for Content and Application Delivery." The whitepaper highlights the growing need for the adoption of IPv6, the challenges that content providers will face in transitioning to IPv6, and Akamai's phased plans for IPv6 support within our service portfolio.