Most of us don’t just use the internet once a day — we’re constantly surrounded by connected devices. Phones, laptops, TVs, cameras, even appliances. And that number keeps growing.
At the center of all of it is the basic Internet Protocol (IP), which is what allows devices to talk to each other.
The current version most of the internet still relies on is IPv4. The problem is that IPv4 only supports about
Most of us don’t just use the internet once a day — we’re constantly surrounded by connected devices. Phones, laptops, TVs, cameras, even appliances. And that number keeps growing.
At the center of all of it is the basic Internet Protocol (IP), which is what allows devices to talk to each other.
The current version most of the internet still relies on is IPv4. The problem is that IPv4 only supports about 4,294,967,296 billion unique addresses — and in practice, even fewer than that.
- Large blocks are reserved for special purposes
- Early allocations gave organizations far more addresses than they needed
- Devices are now always connected instead of sharing connections
- Broadband adoption continues to expand globally
IPv6 has been around since the late 1990s and became a formal internet standard long before most people ever heard of it. Despite this, adoption has not moved forward very quickly. This expands addressing to 340 undecillion total addresses. What’s an undecillion? 10 to the 36th power- a trillion trillion trillion.
IPV6 and IPV4 can coexist, but one is not backward compatible to the other. You can run a ‘dual stack’ connection, that connects over both versions. Usually this will be IPV6 with an IPV4 fallback. A protocol called ‘Happy Eyeballs’ is used to pick the best option of the two.
Why Has IPv6 Adoption Been So Slow?
IPv6 was introduced in the late 1990s. We are now decades into its existence, and yet most home networks — and a surprising number of enterprise ones — still lean heavily on IPv4.
Yes, we “ran out” of IPv4 addresses on paper. But instead of forcing a painful transition, the industry engineered its way around the problem. Most users wouldn’t be able to tell the difference between using IPV4 or IPV6.
Network Address Translation
Network Address Translation (NAT) became the default. Instead of every device needing a public IP address, entire homes — and even large networks — now sit behind a single one. Your router quietly handles the translation, and for most users, it just works. It is only users who want to host their own services who care as much about having publicly routable IP addresses.
That one workaround removed the urgency that IPv6 depended on. If nothing is visibly broken, nobody is motivated to replace it. Businesses had little motivation to do so, leaving it as important to a much smaller group of people.
Internet Service Providers
Most Internet Service Providers support IPV6, but good luck getting support. Performance is inconsistent. So, your mileage as a customer may vary. Over the last few years, I have turned on and turned off IPV6 at various times, due to reliability issues, but despite limited adoption, it continues to get more reliable and hopefully will continue to do so in the future.
The one exception here is mobile. Mobile providers, especially in Asia, are going native IPV6 mostly due to the need for increasing address space. This is slowly making its way to carriers in the rest of the world. So, considering that, it may be what has caused home ISPs to improve, and may drive additional business adoption as well.
Major platforms like Google and Facebook already see a significant percentage of traffic over IPv6.
Advantages
IPv6 is objectively better in a lot of ways:
- Vast address space
- End-to-end connectivity
- Simpler routing (in theory)
But here’s the problem: there’s no killer feature that users notice.
Switching to IPv6 doesn’t:
- make your internet faster
- improve your Wi-Fi
- unlock some must-have app or other features
IPV6 can be faster than IPV4, but that isn’t strictly because of the protocol. It depends. You may find that one protocol or the other is faster depending on the route your traffic takes.
Should You Enable IPv6?
By default, whether you have a commercial router or a homebuilt one like I do, it is usually very easy to turn on IPV6. If it doesn’t immediately work, you may have to google and adjust a few settings for your ISP. At this point, you can judge for yourself whether or not it is beneficial. Keep it on unless you have issues and see what happens.
If you want a full experiment, turn off IPV4 just to see what happens. You may, like on mobile, not even notice.
IPv6 adoption has been slow because IPv4 never actually stopped working. Technologies like NAT allowed networks to stretch limited IPv4 addresses, removing urgency. Since IPv6 offers few noticeable benefits to everyday users, most networks continue to run both protocols without fully transitioning.
