The rollout of IPv6. Is its usage increasing rapidly? J.W.C. Beusink

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1 The rollout of IPv6 Is its usage increasing rapidly? J.W.C. Beusink ABSTRACT This paper discusses the current level of IPv6 usage on the Abilene network. The relation between usage of IPv6 and the default configuration of modern operating systems to IPv6 is determined. Where other research mostly focuses on implementation techniques, this paper focuses on the influence of the rapidly in usage increasing. This paper will show that does not have a noteworthy influence on the usage of IPv6. Keywords Next Generation Internet Protocol (IPng), IPv6, IP6, Windows Vista. 1. INTRODUCTION 1.1 Context The most used protocol for data exchange on the internet is the Internet Protocol version four (IPv4). The internet is expanding rapidly and the amount of address space of IPv4 is not sufficient to meet demands in the future, one of the main reasons for the development of the Internet Protocol version six (IPv6) [Nik07]. IPv6 has been recommended by the IPng Area Directors of the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) in July 1994 and this recommendation was approved by the Internet Engineering Steering Group (IESG) on November 19, 1994 [Hin03], [RFC- 1752]. On the 10 th of August 1998 the IPv6 draft standard was approved by IESG [Ies98], [RFC-2460]. There are several methods available for a gradual transition from an IPv4 infrastructure to an IPv6 (compatible) infrastructure such as tunneling [RFC-2893] and dual stacking [Shi05]. Around the world there are and have been many IPv6 internet workgroups, task forces, initiatives, government incentives, research networks and forums encouraging the usage of IPv6 [Wik07], [Pot07]. Yet most traffic on the internet is still using IPv4 [Abi07]. 1.2 Problem statement IPv6 is the new and improved version of IPv4 and will compensate for the shortcomings of IPv4 and be prepared for future demands. Although IPv6 has been proposed as a replacement for the IPv4 protocol in 1998 the transition takes much longer then prospected. Palet and Bort [PB05] describe the chicken and egg paradigm. In short: Content and Internet Service Providers have little demand for IPv6 so why implement it? Likewise there is not Permission to make digital or hard copies of all or part of this work for personal or classroom use is granted without fee provided that copies are not made or distributed for profit or commercial advantage and that copies bear this notice and the full citation on the first page. To copy otherwise, or republish, to post on servers or to redistribute to lists, requires prior specific permission. 8 th Twente Student Conference on IT, Enschede, January 25 th, 2008 Copyright 2008, University of Twente, Faculty of Electrical Engineering, Mathematics and Computer Science much internet content available in IPv6 and many Internet Service Providers (ISP s) do not have IPv6 support enabled so why would the end user take the effort of installing and/or using IPv6? Modern operating systems have been IPv6 compatible for years now [Hin03]. However just recently Microsoft, the market leader in operating system software, set IPv6 as the preferred protocol over IPv4 in their new version of Windows (Vista) [TCG05], [TCG06]. 1.3 Research questions This leads to the question: Is IPv6 usage on the internet growing more rapidly now Microsoft has set IPv6 enabled by default and set as preferred to IPv4 in? To answer this question we derive the following sub questions: Do we still need IPv6? What market share does have? What is the usage level of IPv6 compared to IPv4 on the internet? What is the influence of on the usage level of IPv6? 1.4 Approach & Outline To find answers to these questions we will first look if we still need IPv6 today in section 2. Next we will examine market share figures of in section 3 to be able to compare it to its influence on the internet. The level of IPv6 traffic shall be examined in section 4 to see if there is a noticeable change in IPv6 usage. In section 5 we will integrate the answers for these questions to answer to what extent IPv6 is used (more) due to usage. 2. DO WE STILL NEED IPV6? We stated that the transition to IPv6 takes much longer than prospected. This raises the question why IPv6 was developed in the first place. Is there no need for IPv6 anymore? According to Nikkel [Nik07], IPv6 was mainly developed to address a number of shortcomings in IPv4. Such as IPv4 address exhaustion, simpler and more extensible headers, improvements to Quality of Service (QoS) and security and more recently: auto-configurability and mobile computing. Nikkel states that these problems were softened by new technologies such as, Network Address Translation (NAT), proxy s, virtual hosting, security at the application layer (SSL, TLS, etc), and availability of low latency networks [Nik07]. Technologies like NAT, proxy s and such have prolonged the time it takes for the IPv4 address space to reach exhaustion. On the 19 th of June 2007 the JPNIC issued a press release regarding the IPv4 address consumption in which they announced: The IPv4 address pool is expected to run out around 2010, according to the most reliable predictions [Apn07]. These predictions were made by Geoff Huston, who has scripted daily generated prediction [Hus07].

2 aug-06 sep-06 okt-06 nov-06 dec-06 jan-07 feb-07 mrt-07 apr-07 mei-07 jun-07 jul-07 aug-07 sep-07 okt-07 okt-04 jan-05 apr-05 jul-05 okt-05 jan-06 apr-06 jul-06 okt-06 jan-07 apr-07 jul-07 okt-07 Everyday more and more types of devices are connected to the internet, making scalability again an issue (for example game consoles, internet enabled TV and VOIP telephones). Nikkel also points out that the increase of high bandwidth real-time applications such as streaming video or audio (e.g. VoIP telephone and streaming audio/video) renews demand for QoS [Nik07]. During this research we spoke to R. Baardman, project leader of IPv6 workgroup of the Student Net Twente (SNT) on the University of Twente. According to him IPv6 is often turned off because of unexpected behavior, often due to human misconfiguration. E.g. a Wi-Fi bridge still in effect and plugged in into a wall outlet, long network time outs before the IPv4 fallback kicks in or lack of local scope for home networking. Although many of the needs to develop IPv6 have been fulfilled by other techniques, there is still a need for IPv6. 3. WINDOWS VISTA MARKET SHARE To investigate if has a significant influence in the rollout of IPv6 we first need to determine its market share over a period of time. We can compare these data with network statistics. Net Applications provides market share data of operating systems. These market share figures are collected from site visits on over 40,000 URL s from many countries [Net07]. Figure 1 displays the top operating system market share trends provided by Net Applications. Clearly Microsoft Windows has been market leader in the operating systems branch for years. The values can also be found in Fout! Verwijzingsbron niet gevonden. in Appendix A. 90% 80% 70% 60% 50% 40% 30% 20% 10% 0% Windows XP Windows 2000 Mac OS MacIntel Other section 4 we shall look at the internet traffic to be able to see if this assumption holds. We did a least square analysis on the curve from the first of January For comparison with the other data we chose an increasing per day scale with the first of January 2007 as day 1. 9,00% 8,00% 7,00% 6,00% 5,00% 4,00% 3,00% 2,00% Lineair () Figure 3 Least square analysis on per day The increase in usage lets itself be described by a linear line very well. The R 2 is very close to 1,00. This line is F x = 2, , We can use this formula for comparison. 4. INTERNET TRAFFIC In this section we will first select a good measurement point and then measure it s IPv6 usage over a period of time. 4.1 Selection of measurement point To answer how much of the internet traffic is IPv6 we need to select a measurement point. This measurement point should have historical data about the traffic on the internet. The larger the network being measured, the better. An internet backbone complies to these requirements. As we are looking for data which would indicate IPv6 usage, a western country backbone is preferred. The Abilene Network is such an infrastructure. It is a high speed Research and Education backbone in the USA which has worldwide connections to other R&E networks. We chose this backbone for its large scale, early adaptation of IPv6 and ease of data access. Figure 1 Operating system market share trends As we are mostly interested in the market share of the relatively new operating system we have zoomed in on the most recent months. For the zoom window we selected the period prior to its first value above 0% until the time of writing. Because there are people who used the beta version of Windows Vista before its regular launch. For even more readability we decided to leave Windows XP out of the picture in Figure 2. 9,00% 8,00% 7,00% 6,00% 5,00% 4,00% 3,00% 2,00% Windows 2000 Mac OS MacIntel Figure 2 Operating system market share trends without Windows XP Clearly is achieving more and more market share each month. If we assume that has an influence on the usage of IPv6 we can conclude that as of January there should be a noticeable increase in its usage. In Other Figure 4 Abilene network topology The Abilene Observatory keeps records of statistics of the Abilene Network, the network developed by Internet2 and partners as its backbone. 4.2 Traffic Measurement Using the weekly engineering NetFlow reports, provided by the Abilene observatory, we were able to derive the percentage of octets which were IPv6 [Abi07]. We wrote a script which uses raw weekly NetFlow data from the Abilene observatory as

3 input. It takes all the fields containing the protocol information, adds these per line for totals and prints the IPv6 values and the totals. Then we used a spreadsheet program to determine the percentages, the results are shown in Figure 5. 1,20% 0,80% 0,60% 0,40% 0,20% Figure 5 historical usage of IPv6 on Abilene Figure 5 displays the percentage of IPv6 usage over a period of time from the first measurement on February 18 th 2002 until October 22 nd 2007 as measured by the Abilene network observatory. As can be seen the usage of IPv6 is remarkably low, well under 1% on average. In the beginning the percentage of IPv6 was higher yet the absolute figures of IPv4 and IPv6 combined are lower in the beginning. The peak in the beginning of December 2006 might be explained by an intensive test case, but as we were mostly interested in the recent trend we did not look further in to this. Again we applied a least square analysis to determine a trend. Which is shown in Figure 6. 0,030% 0,025% 0,020% 0,015% 0,010% 0,005% 0,000% y = 7E-08x + 2E-05 R² = octets LS(octets) Figure 6 recent historical usage of IPv6 on Abilene with least square analysis per day Figure 6 shows the same percentages of IPv6 traffic as Figure 5, but zoomed in on a more recent period for better readability. We chose the first on January as day 1 as we did in Figure 3. Again there is a linear line which describes growth: F x = x With a R 2 of only we can hardly speak of a very strict increase of usage. We can see a slight increase in the recent usage. This usage is so low and so irregular that it is highly unlikely these fluctuations are due to. 5. CONCLUSIONS The main question we tried to answer in this paper is: Is IPv6 usage on the internet growing more rapidly now Microsoft has set IPv6 enabled by default and set as preferred to IPv4 in? In section 4 we looked at the usage figures and found a linear increase in both the usage of and the usage of IPv6. Yet with coefficients being different by a factor of over 4,000 there is no significant relation between IPv6 usage and the market share of. In section 2 we answered Do we still need IPv6? We saw that the main reasons for the development of IPv6 are the increase of address space, QoS, security, auto-configurability, simpler and more extensible headers and mobile computing. Although the need for IPv6 has declined in the past due do techniques such as NAT and Proxy s, recently the need for IPv6 has once again increased. In section 3 we answered What market share does Windows Vista have? Figure 1 points out that Microsoft is market leader in operating systems. Figure 2 clearly shows an increase in s market share since its introduction, having a market share of almost 8% by October 2007 with a clear increase each month, according to data by Net Applications. In section 4 we looked at What is the usage level of IPv6 compared to IPv4 on the internet? Figure 5 indicates very low usage of IPv6: well under 1%. Figure 6 even indicates under 0.1%. Our last sub question What is the influence of on the usage level of IPv6? we answered in section 4.2. We found a linear comparison to its effect: F x = x This linear approach had a R 2 of only which indicates that the measurements are not very close to this line as can be seen in Figure 6. Also the steepness of the line is so low that there barely can be spoken of a relationship. 5.1 Discussion Unfortunately we were not able to compare the data from the Abilene observatory to other data sets. It would be interesting to see whether there is a geographical difference in the influence of. Though countless of initiatives such as research networks, government rules, task forces, working groups, IPv6 initiatives and forums there is still not much increase in IPv6 traffic. Now that is taken out of the question as to IPv6 usage, the question arises what is keeping IPv6? 6. APPENDICES The values used in Figure 1 are included in Table 1 in Appendix A. ACKNOWLEDGMENTS We would like to thank Aiko Pras for his guidance during the making of this paper, the members of the Technical Program Committee for their constructive feedback, netapplications.com for making available data on market share trends, Abilene for making available statistics and Roel Baardmans of the SNT for his insights on IPv6. REFERENCES [Abi07] [Apn07] [Hin03] The Abilene Observatory Data views Accessed on 1 November 2007 from -views.html. Asia Pacific Network Information Centre, (06-Sep-2007). "JPNIC releases statement on IPv4 consumption." Retrieved 26 November, 2007, from Hinden, R. (2003). "IP Version 6 (IPv6)." Last modified 3 January Retrieved on 26 November 2007 from

4 [Hus07] Huston, G. "IPv4 Address Report." Generated 26 November :58 UTC+1000, retrieved 26 November 2007, from ml. [Ies98] Internet Engineering Steering Group (10 Aug :49: ). Protocol Action: Internet Protocol, Version 6 (IPv6) Specifications to Draft Standard. Retrieved 10 November 2007 from ng-ds.txt. [Net07] [Nik07] Net Applications, Top Operating System Market Share Trend. Report generated 20 October Retrieved 13 November 2007 from qprid=5. Nikkel, B. J. (2007). "An introduction to investigating IPv6 networks." Digital Investigation 4(2): [Pot07] Potts, M. (2007). Worldwide IPv6 Initiatives. Eighth International Symposium on Interworking. Santiago, Chile. [PB05] Palet, J. and J. Bort (2005). Deploying IPv6 Sites: A Real Example. Applications and the Internet Workshops, Saint Workshops The 2005 Symposium on. [RFC-1752] Bradner, S. and A. Mankin (1995). RFC1752: The Recommendation for the IP Next Generation Protocol. RFC Editor. [RFC-2460] Deering, S. and R. Hinden (1998). Internet Protocol, Version 6 (IPv6) Specification. RFC Editor. [RFC-2893] Gilligan, R. and E. Nordmark (2000). "RFC2893: Transition Mechanisms for IPv6 Hosts and Routers." RFC Editor. [Shi05] [TCG05] [TCG06] [Wik07] Shin, M.-K. (2005). "The Performance Analysis of NAT-PT and DSTM for IPv6 Dominant Network Deployment." IEICE Transactions on Communications E88- B(12): The Cable Guy, Microsoft TechNet. Changes to IPv6 in and Windows Server "Longhorn" Retrieved 10 November 2007 from The Cable Guy, Microsoft TechNet. Configuring IPv6 with Retrieved 10 November 2007 from Wikipedia.org, IPv6. Last modified 23:14, 21 September 2007, Retrieved 23 September 2007 from

5 APPENDIX A: OPERATING SYSTEM TRENDS Table 1 Operating systems trend per version Month Windows XP Windows 2000 Mac OS MacIntel Other okt-04 63,47% 15,79% 3,23% 17,50% nov-04 65,20% 15,15% 3,23% 16,42% dec-04 66,31% 14,62% 3,29% 15,78% jan-05 67,99% 13,79% 3,41% 14,81% feb-05 68,90% 13,79% 3,37% 13,93% mrt-05 69,87% 13,67% 3,41% 13,04% apr-05 71,05% 13,07% 3,52% 12,36% mei-05 72,04% 12,66% 3,57% 11,73% jun-05 73,43% 12,29% 3,42% 10,86% jul-05 74,88% 11,21% 3,45% 10,46% aug-05 75,92% 10,90% 3,48% 9,69% sep-05 76,36% 10,69% 3,74% 9,20% okt-05 77,44% 10,03% 3,87% 8,66% nov-05 77,92% 9,82% 4,11% 8,15% dec-05 78,92% 9,06% 4,35% 7,66% jan-06 79,90% 8,75% 4,21% 7,14% feb-06 80,17% 8,59% 4,28% 0,03% 6,93% mrt-06 80,70% 8,44% 4,29% 0,08% 6,48% apr-06 81,79% 7,68% 4,33% 0,16% 6,04% mei-06 81,93% 7,78% 4,19% 0,23% 5,86% jun-06 82,68% 7,42% 3,92% 0,36% 5,62% jul-06 83,65% 6,74% 3,80% 0,49% 5,33% aug-06 84,18% 6,54% 3,71% 0,62% 4,95% sep-06 84,56% 0,06% 6,08% 3,88% 0,84% 4,59% okt-06 84,62% 0,09% 5,79% 4,09% 1,12% 4,30% nov-06 84,95% 0,11% 5,46% 4,10% 1,29% 4,09% dec-06 85,30% 0,16% 5,00% 4,15% 1,52% 3,87% jan-07 85,02% 0,18% 4,93% 4,34% 1,88% 3,64% feb-07 84,33% 0,93% 4,75% 4,29% 2,09% 3,60% mrt-07 83,57% 2,04% 4,71% 3,94% 2,14% 3,60% apr-07 82,65% 3,02% 4,42% 3,89% 2,32% 3,69% mei-07 82,02% 3,74% 4,31% 3,95% 2,51% 3,47% jun-07 81,94% 4,52% 4,00% 3,52% 2,48% 3,54% jul-07 81,40% 5,41% 3,74% 3,36% 2,61% 3,49% aug-07 80,48% 6,26% 3,66% 3,33% 2,82% 3,44% sep-07 79,32% 7,38% 3,32% 3,38% 3,23% 3,39% okt-07 79,07% 7,91% 3,16% 3,14% 3,41% 3,31%