First thing I do on a fresh Linux install is set ipv6 to deactivated. Fixes all my initial Linux install problems. I don't question it, it just works every time.
Google hits 50% IPv6, very good for accessing websites.
But my TP-Link router blocks by default inbound IPv6 connections, without any option to configure it, still bad for pure IPv6 bidirectional streaming, gaming or services on home networks.
Most people will never touch their router config, so the defaults are important. Default-deny inbound is better than allow. But it's surprisingly dumb that the router won't even let you configure it to allow, you sure there's no option to disable the firewall?
I’ve yet to live anywhere where the available mainstream ISPs were willing or able to provide IPv6 service. I’d be happy to use it, if I were able.
I also have built cloud infrastructure for multiple SaaS providers with tens of thousands of customers over the past decade. Only one customer I’m aware of has ever even requested IPv6 support. And if customers aren’t asking for it, my employers have never been interested in the full network re-architecture required to truly support it internally.
There are still several basic services you can’t run IPv6-only in AWS, and a handful of AWS service features that don’t support it at all.
As a sysadmin for decades now, I’ve always found IPv6 to be overengineered and in many ways completely ridiculous. But I’d love to be supporting it in everything I do. Only I still can’t, even after 20+ years of being lectured about it; even after complete IPv4 exhaustion has been reached. I don’t think we’re ever going to turn IPv4 off. At best it will be progressively hidden, even from technical users. And folks like me will just have to keep building workarounds to patch the holes where IPv6 still doesn’t work.
Great example of how fixing things "the correct way" does not seem to work sometimes.
They added those new addresses that can store more information.. but this requires a rewrite of old software to make it work.
If they used the old >bolting on top< method by extending ip4 from 4 octets to 8 (or more) octets, then old software could be extended much easier too / probably addresses could be simply mechanically translated too, so ancient software can work.
I made my homepage (www.makonea.com) support IPv6 too, but the number of people actually using it is much smaller than I expected. Is IPv6 really that widely used? I'm supporting both because I heard it's good to support both, but I'm not sure what the actual benefit is. Sometimes, when behind Cloudflare, I think even if someone connects via IPv6, it ends up coming through as IPv4
I want Google gone. This company is causing too many problems.
I am still sometimes using Google Search. First results are now
almost always videos on youtube, aka self-promo. These videos are
in 99.9% of the search results I use, totally useless and worthless.
Even searching on youtube has recently gotten worse. It is also
crap now. I know that because I bookmark various videos, and I
can not find older videos anymore either. I can eliminate some
results I don't care via ublock origin hero-blocking this Google
garbage, but I really think we should no longer allow this de-facto
monopoly to worsen the global situation any longer. The USA is
protecting these gangsters - it is time to have true legislation
that gets rid of that mafia bloc that is Google.
Cloudflare sees over 40%, and it hasn't gone up in the last year even with the overall traffic increase. Personally, as the APNIC article also says about their own observations, I guess the overall adoption is somewhere in between.
But we have to remember that this reflects the adoption on the client side. With many high profile services still IPv4-only, the fraction of IPv6 flowing on the public Internet might be much lower.
I wonder what incentives are needed to push this forward, because it's not the same incentives as years ago for sure. We've long since exhausted new IPv4 allocations.
In America I've never had a non-mobile ISP offer IPv6. At this point it would be best to recognize the sunk cost and give up on the migration. IPv6 will never reach the 100% needed to turn off IPv4.
Just to add to the 'but the ISPs do not' anecdotes, it has been six months since someone last commented so it is probably time to mention this again on Hacker News:
A major ISP in the U.K., that said in a public statement on World IPv6 Day in 2011 that
> As well as our core and access networks being capable of supporting IPv6, we're rigorously testing our entire network to ensure that all customers have a smooth and simple transition when the time comes to flick the switch and turn IPv6 on. We're really pleased with how our tests are advancing and are happy to say that by the end of 2012, we'll be able to fully support customers looking to switch to IPv6.
has not managed to actually flick that switch in 15 years.
We're finally getting there in the US, though. Top ASNs are >75% IPv6 capable.
It's Optimum Communications and Frontier (my provider) that are really holding the numbers down at ~15% each. The latter is improving very slowly, but not a lot of evidence of change in the former.
Here in Brazil most ISPs provide IPv6 by now... But what happens a lot, when field technician are installing your broadband, they just... don't configure IPv6. As if IPv4 (CGNAT!) wasn't enough. With bigger ISPs this is less common.
With mobile carriers this is even worse. For some reason, some default config are IPv4 by default, while literally all of them supports IPv6.
When I set up a "pure" (not really) IPv6 server, was surprised that Github does not support it. Without the voluntary operations listed at https://nat64.xyz/ , they'd be unreachable from IPv6.
> Is IPv6 really that widely used?
Mobile carriers use it almost exclusively, which is already a huge chunk of the internet, and newer ISPs are switching to it too.
Whenever I turn on ipv6 on my router (isp supports it, dual stack) randomly I get half the download speeds, YouTube video freezes, and eventually a captcha screen on google. The moment I disable v6 even only at the client side I get to max out my bandwidth. Tested on google drive, sites on azure and aws and netflix’s fast.com which show’s your ip just to confirm I was connecting over v6.
62 comments
[ 4.9 ms ] story [ 82.4 ms ] threadAt the moment pretty much every website is reachable via IPv4 but a lot not via IPv6. Will there be a day when this turns around?
IPv6 traffic crosses the 50% mark - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47777894 - April 2026 (621 comments)
---
Other recent threads, if anyone would like a thousand more IPv6 comments:
The world in which IPv6 was a good design (2017) - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47821429 - April 2026 (166 comments)
IPv6 is the only way forward - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47680124 - April 2026 (339 comments)
IPv6 Adoption in 2026 - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47083086 - Feb 2026 (21 comments)
IPv6 is not insecure because it lacks a NAT - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46696303 - Jan 2026 (577 comments)
But my TP-Link router blocks by default inbound IPv6 connections, without any option to configure it, still bad for pure IPv6 bidirectional streaming, gaming or services on home networks.
I also have built cloud infrastructure for multiple SaaS providers with tens of thousands of customers over the past decade. Only one customer I’m aware of has ever even requested IPv6 support. And if customers aren’t asking for it, my employers have never been interested in the full network re-architecture required to truly support it internally.
There are still several basic services you can’t run IPv6-only in AWS, and a handful of AWS service features that don’t support it at all.
As a sysadmin for decades now, I’ve always found IPv6 to be overengineered and in many ways completely ridiculous. But I’d love to be supporting it in everything I do. Only I still can’t, even after 20+ years of being lectured about it; even after complete IPv4 exhaustion has been reached. I don’t think we’re ever going to turn IPv4 off. At best it will be progressively hidden, even from technical users. And folks like me will just have to keep building workarounds to patch the holes where IPv6 still doesn’t work.
They added those new addresses that can store more information.. but this requires a rewrite of old software to make it work.
If they used the old >bolting on top< method by extending ip4 from 4 octets to 8 (or more) octets, then old software could be extended much easier too / probably addresses could be simply mechanically translated too, so ancient software can work.
Ubiquity gateways also seem to not support it sadly. It would be awesome if they supported something like Hurricane Electric’s tunneling.
Browsers try both stacks (Happy Eyeballs algorithm) so likely the IPv4 is working better for your visitors.
Since must people use IPv4 most of the time, IPv6 performance issues go unnoticed by the users, ISPs, CDNs, etc.
Sure Gmail has ipv6 enabled and routable ip6 MX. but sending to those addresses is often rejected and forced to retry over ipv4.
Don’t get me started on gh
[1] https://www.google.com/intl/en/ipv6/statistics.html#tab=per-...
I am still sometimes using Google Search. First results are now almost always videos on youtube, aka self-promo. These videos are in 99.9% of the search results I use, totally useless and worthless. Even searching on youtube has recently gotten worse. It is also crap now. I know that because I bookmark various videos, and I can not find older videos anymore either. I can eliminate some results I don't care via ublock origin hero-blocking this Google garbage, but I really think we should no longer allow this de-facto monopoly to worsen the global situation any longer. The USA is protecting these gangsters - it is time to have true legislation that gets rid of that mafia bloc that is Google.
https://radar.cloudflare.com/adoption-and-usage#ipv4-vs-ipv6
But we have to remember that this reflects the adoption on the client side. With many high profile services still IPv4-only, the fraction of IPv6 flowing on the public Internet might be much lower.
I wonder what incentives are needed to push this forward, because it's not the same incentives as years ago for sure. We've long since exhausted new IPv4 allocations.
New regex: IP(any collection of numbers and dots).
Now we have infinite IP address possibilities and no one controls the space.
Done.
* https://havevirginmediaenabledipv6yet.co.uk/
A major ISP in the U.K., that said in a public statement on World IPv6 Day in 2011 that
> As well as our core and access networks being capable of supporting IPv6, we're rigorously testing our entire network to ensure that all customers have a smooth and simple transition when the time comes to flick the switch and turn IPv6 on. We're really pleased with how our tests are advancing and are happy to say that by the end of 2012, we'll be able to fully support customers looking to switch to IPv6.
has not managed to actually flick that switch in 15 years.
* https://ispreview.co.uk/story/2011/06/08/uk-isp-fluidata-hai...
It's Optimum Communications and Frontier (my provider) that are really holding the numbers down at ~15% each. The latter is improving very slowly, but not a lot of evidence of change in the former.
With mobile carriers this is even worse. For some reason, some default config are IPv4 by default, while literally all of them supports IPv6.
Fun fun