IPv6 Progress in 2024
23rd December 2024 – 10 minute read

By Arkenox®
As 2024 ends, we will look at the key developments (both good and bad) that shaped the progress of IPv6 throughout the year.
IPv6 adoption has continued its upward trajectory throughout 2024. Significant events have occurred in consumer, customer and cloud based networks.
IPv6 represents the next generation of the internet – a change that will have a real impact on all of us and everything we do. It is now a technology that all organisations need to account for, secure and prioritise its use.
The Stats
There are various sources we can use to gauge the progress of IPv6 globally. We also perform our own internet wide assessments and will include our statistics soon!
All consulted sources show that global IPv6 adoption rates increased in 2024, with countries in Europe and North America reporting marked growth. Perhaps these are in relation to the on-going government IPv6 mandates in both the US and Germany.
Google keeps track of what percentage of its users access the site over IPv6. This strongly indicates the extent to which real world users have adopted IPv6. For someone to reach Google via IPv6, their device, home network and internet provider all need to support it.
According to Google, IPv6 usage increased by 2.14% to 46.72% in 2024.
In the first week of December 2023, the peak IPv6 usage was 44.58%, but during the same week in 2024, it had risen to 46.72%.
IPv6 usage among Google’s users through 2024. Source: Google
However, as we can see in the graph above, this growth wasn’t steady throughout the year.
In fact, IPv6 usage hit its highest point in late June 2024 at 47.36% before dropping slightly. So, could this have been due to the security vulnerability CVE-2024-38063? We discussed this at the UK IPv6 Council Annual Meeting in November and whether incorrect assumptions impact the adoption of IPv6 – more details on CVE-2024-38063 will follow later in the article.
APNIC – Asia Pacific Network Information
APNIC is a Regional Internet Registry (RIR) that performs internet-wide assessments of both IPv6 capability and the preference levels of devices included in their studies.
- Capability refers to whether a device can use IPv6 to communicate with the internet.
- Preference indicates that an IPv6-capable device chooses to use IPv6 connectivity over IPv4 when both are available.
Globally, 39.59% of devices are now capable of using IPv6, according to APNIC. An increase of 2.98% in 2024.
India has the highest level of IPv6 adoption globally, with 79.81% of devices currently using IPv6.
India’s strong IPv6 adoption rate could be related to the limited supply of IPv4 addresses held by India’s Internet Service Providers, which has led the country to leverage IPv6 as a solution for its rapidly growing tech sector’s connectivity needs.
The statistics provided by APNIC also highlight which countries have made significant progress in IPv6 adoption during 2024, and it is likely that this will continue into 2025.
Government IPv6 mandates are driving partner countries to also adopt IPv6.
In the table above, we can see those key strategic partners of the United States – Japan, Mexico and Canada – have made notable advancements in their IPv6 networks. This progress likely results from the United States Federal IPv6 mandate, which is set for completion in 2025.
As a result, close partner countries must adopt IPv6 to avoid incompatibility between US federally mandated IPv6 networks and their existing IPv4 infrastructures.
We also include Ireland in this assessment because it hosts the European headquarters of major American companies including Meta, Google and LinkedIn. These organisations rank among the leading IPv6 adopters.
IPv6 connections are on average 6.56ms faster than IPv4, according to APNIC.
Summary
The stats from both Google and APNIC show IPv6 adoption and usage is growing globally, we have started to see the impact that government mandates are having on partner countries, this progress is something that will continue through into 2025.
News Events
Microsoft Enables IPv6 Support for Exchange Online
On 1st October 2024, Microsoft started to enable IPv6 for all customer-accepted domains using Exchange Online for inbound mail. This announcement impacted over 5 million organisations, according to recent Exchange Online usage statistics.
Microsoft quoted:
These updates are designed to enhance security, improve performance, and ensure compliance with modern Internet standards.
You can find the full announcement details here.
AWS Started Charging Customers for Public IPv4 Addresses
From February 2024, AWS started to charge customers for using public IPv4 addresses. Google and Azure also charge for using public IPv4 addresses in their cloud environments. For all three cloud service providers, the IPv6 alternative is free.
You can find full details of AWS costings here.
Internet Service Providers in the UK Further Advanced IPv6 Adoption
- Following the success by Sky Italia, Sky Broadband UK has also leveraged IPv6-Only with IPv4aaS via MAP-T. This provides Sky Broadband customers in the UK IPv4 connectivity using IPv6 transport. Sky is currently rolling out IPv6 support for Sky Glass and Sky Stream. You can find more information here.
- O2 UK Mobile is assigning IPv6 addresses to a growing number of customers, although these addresses do not function properly for data or mobile broadband connections. Despite the increase in IPv6 assignments, O2 has not provided a clear deployment strategy; however, could this hint to IPv6 rollout in 2025.
- Vodafone provided an update on their consumer broadband IPv6 rollout. Vodafone stated that 38% of consumer broadband now uses IPv6. Customers reported very few proven issues, and IPv4 address scarcity served as the main driver for Vodafone’s IPv6 rollout. You can find more information here.
CVE-2024-38063
In August 2024, Microsoft released a patch for a critical TCP/IP remote code execution vulnerability that affected all Windows systems with IPv6 enabled.
At the time of release, Microsoft informed us:
Systems are not affected if IPv6 is disabled on the target machine.
Based on this information, many organisations disabled IPv6 as a mitigation, but Microsoft still actively discourages that practice. As mentioned earlier, disabling IPv6 to manage the risks of IPv6 deployment, may have directly affected the 2024 IPv6 adoption rate.
We wrote an article in August about the narrative of “Disabling IPv6” and how organisations can properly manage the risks associated with IPv6.
RFCs
Requests for Comments (RFCs) are a type of publication from the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) and the Internet Society (ISOC). RFCs include standards, best practices, and informational documents related to the internet’s development. IPv6 related RFCs created in 2024 include:
- RFC 9568 – Virtual Router Redundancy Protocol (VRRP) Version 3 for IPv4 and IPv6
- RFC 9602 – Segment Routing over IPv6 (SRv6) Segment Identifiers in the IPv6 Addressing Architecture
- RFC 9603 – Path Computation Element Communication Protocol (PCEP) Extensions for IPv6 Segment Routing
- RFC 9631 – The IPv6 Compact Routing Header (CRH)
- RFC 9637 – Expanding the IPv6 Documentation Space
- RFC 9663 – Using DHCPv6 Prefix Delegation (DHCPv6-PD) to Allocate Unique IPv6 Prefixes per Client in Large Broadcast Networks
- RFC 9673 – IPv6 Hop-by-Hop Options Processing Procedures
- RFC 9685 – Listener Subscription for IPv6 Neighbour Discovery Multicast and Anycast Addresses
Wrap Up
Globally, IPv6 use grew by more than 2% in 2024. Government mandates, wider vendor support, and improved service compatibility continue to drive this growth.
Will we see IPv6 statistics pass 50% of internet based traffic in 2025? We’ll be posting our IPv6: What to look out for in 2025 article soon!
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.




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