The transition to IPv6 must be accelerated. From barometer to barometer, Arcep continues to warn about the delay in adopting the latest internet protocol. With the proliferation of digital terminals and connected objects, IPv4 addresses, used since 1983, are singularly lacking.
The regulatory authority for the telecoms sector notes that Bouygues Telecom, Orange and SFR have already allocated between 93% and 99% of the IPv4 addresses they own at the end of June 2022. At the global level, it is possible to visualize the shortage of IPv4 addresses on this site containing data from the main internet registers.
France in third place
IPv6, whose specifications were finalized in 1998, offers an almost infinite number of addresses. If the migration to this new protocol started in 2003, it is far from complete twenty years later. In the meantime, the coexistence of the two types of IP addressing is not without posing a problem in terms of net neutrality.
“IPv6-only” websites or applications are not accessible to users who only have an IPv4 address. Sharing IPv4 addresses between multiple users can cause malfunctions for network games or connected home control systems.
The scarcity of IPv4 addresses has even created a secondary resale market, with the cost of selling an IPv4 going from 15 euros to 50 euros between mid-20218 and mid-2021. A price which has since fallen according to this market place but which nevertheless constitutes a barrier to entry against new players.
If we believe the interactive map offered by Arcep, France is rather well positioned. With an IPv6 usage rate of almost 63%, our nation would rank third among the countries studied, behind India and Malaysia. According to the regulator’s forecasts, French consumer subscribers should have IPv6 activated by default at 94% on landlines and 88% on mobiles by mid-2025.
SFR, dunce cap
If we zoom in by operator, the market offers strong disparities. On mobile, the results are encouraging. Bouygues Telecom leads the dance with 89% of customers activated in IPv6 by mid-2022. Orange and SFR rank behind with rates of 71% and 49%. Despite the compatibility of its mobile network with IPv6, Free Mobile records a very low percentage (1%) because the IPv6 protocol is not activated by default.
The situation is less satisfactory on the fixed networks except for Free and Orange which offer high IPv6 activation rates with approximately 99% and 89% respectively. Bouygues Telecom is continuing its efforts with a rate of 53% in mid-2022 compared to around 44% of customers activated in mid-2021. Starting from afar with 4.1% in mid-2021, SFR has now reached 22%.
The state is not setting a good example
The transition to IPv6 does not only concern operators. “Web site hosts still represent one of the main bottlenecks in the migration to IPv6,” observes Arcep. The rate of websites available in IPv6 is only 25% when considering the 2.3 million websites in .fr, .re, .pm, .yt, .tf and .wf. Among the players in the top 10, only IONOS 1&1, Cloudflare and Infomaniak have more than half of the sites with IPv6. It should be noted that the State does not set an example, with only 1.8% of .gouv.fr sites available in IPv6.
The transition of mail hosts is experiencing a very strong delay which cannot be filled. Only 8.3% of mail servers are currently addressed in IPv6 compared to 7.4% in mid-2021. This could pose problems of resilience and degradation of the quality of service. Only Google and Infomaniak stand out with more than 89% of IPv6 domain names for email. The third is Scaleway with 27.4, the other players stagnate between 0 and 0.8%.
OS: Ubuntu and connected objects lag behind
DNS server hosts that translate a domain name into an IP address are, fortunately, the most advanced in the transition to IPv6 with around 75% of servers supporting the protocol. Without the top 10, five players – OVHcloud, Gandi LiveDNS, IONOS 1&1, Cloudflare and Adista – which have more than 80% of DNS servers in IPv6. Note that Google (31.5%) and AWS (42.6%) are in the second part of the table.
Finally, there is the question of terminals. All operating systems are compatible with IPv6 which has been enabled by default for many years. This has been the case with Windows since Windows Vista in 2007. On the other hand, in the open source field, the rate of Ubuntu OSs that have IPv6 connectivity is only 19%. Similarly, if IPv6 is integrated into the OS of many connected objects – alarm system, televisions – the manufacturer has often not activated it by default.