IPv6: Predictions for 2025
2nd January 2025 – 12 minute read

By Arkenox®
We recently published our IPv6 Progress in 2024 article, which looked at events and progress made by IPv6 throughout 2024. Building on these events, we can start to discuss some of the things that might happen in 2025 for IPv6.
The big question for 2025 is this:
Is IPv6 usage going to surpass 50% of internet based traffic across the globe?
The answer is not simple… possibly and it would depend on the source.
If IPv6 were to account for 50% of internet based traffic, it would mark the most significant IPv6 milestone to date and would unquestionably establish IPv6 as a core part of the internet.
If we consider Google’s IPv6 usage statistics, this milestone is a real possibility for 2025. Peak IPv6 usage in 2024 reached 47.36%, representing an increase of 2.78% during the year. If this same rate of adoption continues throughout 2025, it is likely that Google will observe more than 50% of their traffic occurring over IPv6 for the first time.
So what are some of the events that might happen in 2025?
Addition (31/01/25) – If we include the latest stats from CNNIC, global IPv6 usage has passed 50%.
Predictions
- United States is expected to take a more aggressive approach to IPv6 adoption in order to meet mandated targets. This push is likely to be driven by the new Trump administration with a renewed focus on federal efficiency by the Department of Government Efficiency.
- Price of IPv4 addresses is predicted to increase in 2025. Encouraging organisations to migrate to IPv6 to free up IPv4 addresses for sale. A price increase may also force many organisations to utilise IPv6 due to potential cost savings
- Academic Institutions are expected to further adopt or plan to adopt IPv6. Based on the success seen at various educational establishments such as Imperial College London, CERN and Jisc. It is likely that more academic institutions will also look to embrace IPv6, possibly motivated by the previous point.
- Blockchain, IoT and AI to utilise the benefits of IPv6. Early IPv6 adopters are beginning to report advantages such as energy savings, redundancy and improved connectivity. These benefits could have a significant impact across a wide range of sectors, particularly those that experienced growth in 2024.
- Organisations are expected to focus on auditing and securing their IPv6 networks. While security has often lagged behind technology, the rate of IPv6 adoption and the growing number of devices with IPv6 enabled present security challenges that organisations can no longer afford to ignore in 2025.
For more detailed analysis of these points, find out more below.
United States Is Expected to Take a More Aggressive Approach to IPv6 Adoption in Order to Meet Mandated Targets
In 2025, the USA will enter the fifth and final year of its federal IPv6 mandate (M-21-07). The drive towards IPv6 adoption in the USA comes from the view that:
Full transition to IPv6 is the only viable option to ensure future growth and innovation in Internet technology and services.
All federal departments will now have to hit the following milestones to be compliant with M-21-07:
Some of the federal departments have been slow to hit the defined milestones. These departments have been publicly called out for not meeting their requirements. We posted about the IRS not meeting IPv6 deployment goals on LinkedIn back in September 2024.
There a new drivers that could push the USA towards successful completion of this mandate:
- The memorandum was originally produced in 2020 under the first Trump administration by the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) headed by Russ Vought. As the new Trump administration is due to start, Russ Vought has been renominated as director of the OMB, so those who originally produced the mandate return to positions of power.
- New government initiatives, such as the Department for Government Efficiency, could view this mandate as a target to work towards. Achieving this mandate would be a significant win for the USA on the global technology stage.
- Cloud service providers have massively increased their IPv6 offerings in 2024. This could make it easier for federal departments to migrate to IPv6 without having to redesign IPv4 services for IPv6-only connectivity.
We spoke in our IPv6 Progress in 2024 about the impact that the US mandate could be having on partner countries. Close partner countries are consequently required to adopt IPv6 themselves, due to the incompatibility between US federally mandated IPv6 networks and their own IPv4 infrastructures.
Price of IPv4 Addresses is Predicted to Increase in 2025
This topic was discussed in detail at the last UK IPv6 Council annual meeting in November 2024. According to Hilco Streambank, the current average price of an IPv4 address is $33. However, this price has steadily increased throughout 2024 and is likely to continue rising in 2025.
What does this mean?
- Organisations with large IPv4 assignments may consider migrating existing IPv4 services to IPv6. This transition can free up IPv4 addresses that can be sold, helping to alleviate budget constraints. Some organisations may offset the initial costs of migrating to IPv6 by selling their IPv4 address allocations as the value increases.
- Organisations and developing countries will look to adopt IPv6 where possible to avoid the increasing costs of services that are heavily reliant on IPv4. India has demonstrated that IPv6 is a viable solution for providing connectivity to a rapidly growing technology sector.
- Large technology companies such as Amazon have predominantly purchased many of the IPv4 addresses listed for sale. But in 2025, we could see attention from more traditional investment firms attracted by the lucrative returns offered by IPv4, especially with the growing practice of IPv4 leasing
Academic Institutions are Expected to Further Adopt or Plan to Adopt IPv6
David Stockdale spoke in November 2024 about the success of Imperial College London‘s IPv6-mostly deployment. Full details can be found here:
Universities have highly complex networks that incorporate nearly all possible use cases. IPv6 can help these organisations continue to scale and adapt to new use cases in the future.
What could encourage more academic institutions to deploy IPv6 in 2025:
- Success shown by other organisations, such as Jisc, who offer IPv6 as a standard option for Janet-connected customers and provide support to develop IPv6 deployment strategies, and CERN, who have utilised the IPv6 connectivity offered by Janet to perform groundbreaking research.
- Most universities in Europe and the US were early internet adopters and often have large allocations of IPv4. If the value of IPv4 addresses rises in 2025 and with more services now compatible with IPv6, this could push universities to adopt IPv6 in 2025.
Blockchain, IoT and AI to Utilise the Benefits of IPv6
IPv6 offers greater connectivity between entities, enables redundancy through features such as the Neighbour Discovery Protocol (NDP) and it has been indicated that IPv6 can be more energy efficient. These attributes can address core challenges in technologies like blockchain, IoT, and AI.
IPv6 and Blockchain
Speaking at the London Blockchain Conference in August 2024, Latif Ladid (Founder and President of the Global IPv6 Forum) said:
“Blockchain empowers peer-to-peer communication and transfers, and this can only happen if there are enough IP addresses. The current IPv4 has hit its cap, and only IPv6 can enable blockchain to reach its full potential.”
Bitcoin SV (BSV) and nChain are strong advocates of IPv6 and have been public about the benefits of IPv6 and blockchain.
Bitcoin (BTC) Core developers removed IP-to-IP functionality from the blockchain in 2011, primarily due to the inability for IPv4 to provide end-to-end connectivity for transactions. IPv6 solves this problem and would enable a true decentralised blockchain, where users could directly communicate with each other and even utilise temporary addresses for additional privacy.
The full interview at the London Blockchain Conference can be found below:
IPv6 and IoT
We’re only a couple of days into 2025 and according to Google Scholar, nearly 100 academic papers have already been published that reference IPv6 and IoT.
As we drive towards an increasingly connected internet in 2025, the key issue is that we first need to be able to connect those devices to the internet. We’re well aware of the depletion of IPv4 addresses, often the workarounds used to prolong the life of IPv4, such as Network Address Translation (NAT) are inefficient in IoT environments.
How can IPv6 transform IoT in 2025:
- IPv6 over Low-Power Wireless Personal Area Networks (6LoWPAN) is specifically designed for low-power, resource-constrained IoT devices. Power usage is often a critical problem for IoT devices and IPv6 could be a long-term solution for the operation of IoT devices in energy limited environments.
- IPv6 is already regularly used within smart meters, where mesh networks built on IPv6 are used to improve connectivity and routing efficiency. Mesh network nodes can extend the network’s reach without requiring additional infrastructure and the network itself can self-heal. These features make IPv6 ideal for the types of environments where we are likely to find IoT devices.
IPv6 and AI
In 2024, it was impossible to move without hearing or reading the acronym AI. Artificial Intelligence has transformed productivity, decision-making, and innovation. However, we often only see the output of AI, the size of the compute and infrastructure required to create useful AI comes with extreme financial and resource costs.
Many companies have turned to cloud service providers such as AWS, Azure and GCP to supply their computational needs. Even with outsourcing, costs can be astronomical. An analysis released in 2024 claimed that OpenAI is spending $4 billion on server capacity from Microsoft a year.
So, how could IPv6 help reduce the cost of running AI in 2025?
- Cloud service providers have started charging customers for public IPv4 addresses, whereas IPv6 addresses are free. The savings per IPv4 address (approximately $40), when scaled up could result in significant financial savings for organisations that heavily leverage cloud services.
- Energy savings associated with IPv6 deployments could help organisations that use local compute by lowering the costs of running AI, whilst also reducing their carbon footprint.
- Shared computer resources. As large organisations invest in their own local compute for the purpose of AI, we have started to see these organisations act as mini cloud service providers and offer their compute to customers. IPv6 will create the required connectivity for shared computer resources.
Organisations to Focus on Auditing and Securing their IPv6 Networks in 2025
Security policies, defences and monitoring often lag behind technological advancements. Arkenox® regularly sees IPv6 networks that have been configured without the necessary security controls, this can be due to a range of different reasons such as:
- IPv6 deployment strategies listing security as one of the last stages of deployment, once the IPv6 network was configuring and running correctly, later stages of the plan were never completed or security was omitted entirely.
- Network controls for IPv6 were disabled to debug network issues and those IPv6 controls were not re-enabled. Or IPv6 connectivity was enabled upstream by the ISP, networking equipment and endpoints all supported IPv6 so those devices started to use IPv6 bypassing existing security controls.
- Organisations not fully understanding how to secure IPv6 or how IPv6 connectivity differs from IPv4 connectivity.
IPv6 will already be present in every organisations network, whether they know it or not. As more services migrate to IPv6 and as government mandates begin to force entities to support IPv6, then all organisations will have to account for this technology in their own policies and procedures.
You cannot protect what you don’t know, understanding your IPv6 networks is the first step to security. Cybercriminals are adapting their tools to exploit vulnerabilities in the IPv6 space.
We spoke at the UK IPv6 Councils Annual meeting in November 2024 about IPv6 security best practices and the common issues that often lead to insecure or non-optimal IPv6 networks.
As IPv6 progresses towards 50% of internet traffic, ensure that your IPv6 deployment is secure and scalable, allowing your business’s digital networks to continue to grow throughout 2025.
Whether you are actively using IPv6, are in the process of deployment or want to discover your organisation’s current exposure, our services are designed to offer the level of understanding you need.
About Us
Arkenox®, enables organisations to understand and secure their IPv6 networks by discovering your externally facing IPv6 surface area.
Contact us for more information about how you can take control of your IPv6 networks.
Check out our recent presentation at the UK IPv6 Councils annual meeting at Cisco Meraki.
Our next talk will be on the 20th February 2025 as part of the Digital Trust and Security Seminar Series hosted by Digital Futures at The University of Manchester.
You can find free tickets for the in-person event here.
Finally, Happy New Year!




Understand and Secure Your IPv6 Networks.
Discover your externally facing IPv6 attack surface area and take control of your IPv6 network with our services