The French telecoms regulator reports that Internet users in France are among those who use IPv6 the most in the world.
From eighth to third place: this is the spectacular progression that France has just experienced in the ranking of countries with the most Internet users using IPv6. This new top was shared on December 6 by the Electronic Communications Regulatory Authority (Arcep). The two countries ahead are India and Malaysia.
Arcep data comes from a synthesis of four sources: Google, Facebook, Akamai (a major provider of various web services) and Apnic (the regional IP address registry for the Asia-Pacific region) . France achieved an IPv6 adoption rate of 58.27%, with a leap of 13 points in the space of one year.
India, for its part, exceeded the bar of two Internet users out of three in IPv6 (67.76%) and Malaysia is at 60.93%. The rest of the top 10 is rounded out by Germany, Belgium, Saudi Arabia, Greece, the United States, Vietnam and Israel, all of which topped at least the 50% mark. The country in the last position of this top is Syria, with 0.47%.
| Top 10 countries | Degree of IPv6 adoption |
|---|---|
| India | 67.76% |
| Malaysia | 60.93% |
| France | 58.27% |
| Germany | 57.57% |
| Belgium | 57.53% |
| Saudi Arabia | 57.29% |
| Greece | 56.92% |
| United States | 52.31% |
| Vietnam | 51.27% |
| Israel | 50.03% |
IPv6 and its 340 sextillion addresses
This is all great, but it doesn’t explain what an IPv6 address is. In fact, it is an address system that is used to contact all machines that connect to a computer network – in this case, the Internet. For years, this system relied on a version called IPv4, capable of offering around 4.3 billion addresses.
At the time, we could say that such a volume would be sufficient to cover all needs. But that was without taking into account the explosion of personal computing, smartphones and all connected accessories – the Internet of Things is still in its infancy. Today, IPv4 is out of breath: this format is no longer sufficient to provide an address for each device in circulation.
IPv6 offers an answer that can certainly be described as definitive, since this format makes it possible to generate 340 sextillion addresses. A number that is written with a 1 followed by 37 zeros is a sextillion. It’s a lot. By comparison, the visible Universe is thought to have “only” 200 trillion stars – that’s the number 200 followed by 21 zeros.
