14 DAY TRIAL // There aren't a lot of people in the business that don't know this, IPv4 addresses have nearly run out and IPv6 needs to be adopted as soon as possible. Yet no one is doing something very concrete about it.
Some sites have deployed support, some small scale ISPs are testing or even supporting the technology in some way, but IPv6 traffic is a minuscule percentage of internet traffic on any given day.
But there are at least some companies moving forward, Comcast, one of the biggest ISPs in the US is now deploying a wider IPv6 test, using a dual-stack architecture.
"We've achieved another critical milestone in our transition to IPv6 — we have started the pilot market deployment of IPv6 to customers in selected markets," Jason Livingood, Vice President of Internet Systems at Comcast, wrote.
"We're now the first large ISP in North America to start deploying IPv6. This is a significant milestone not just inside our own company but also in the industry, particularly given the chicken and egg relationship between the availability of content and software that supports IPv6 and the deployment of IPv6 to end users," he said.
The move is commendable since the problem is only getting worse and the IPv4 address pool has already run out in some places. This while most ISPs and most websites are years away from adopting IPv6.
Comcast is also opting for the most sane solution, a native dual stack. This means that subscribers get both a IPv4 and a IPv6 address and will connect over the protocol that their hardware and the destination supports.
This is just a pilot program, Comcast is not ready for a national roll out, there are still issues to work out and problems to fix. But it's an encouraging first move.
"Native dual stack, the approach we are using, avoids breaking or slowing applications and maintains a better and faster broadband Internet experience," Comcast wrote.