Saturday, October 08, 2016

Amazon Web Services adding more IPv6 support

Right on the heels of Microsoft Azure's announcement of IPv6 support for VM's and AWS's own announcement earlier of IPv6 support for S3 is the current AWS IPv6 news. Specifically, AWS has enabled IPv6 support for CloudFront, AWS WAF, and S3 Transfer Acceleration. You can read more about this at https://aws.amazon.com/about-aws/whats-new/2016/10/ipv6-support-for-cloudfront-waf-and-s3-transfer-acceleration/ for details. This isn't the announcement I wanted to see from AWS (full IPv6 support for all services and VPC) but it is a huge step in the right direction. Given the pace of announcements I would not be surprised to hear full IPv6 support by re:Invent at the end of November 2016.
Once that final announcement is done from AWS, the landscape of IPv6 adoption will change dramatically. If you break down the IPv6 adoption areas it is clear to see where the work is needed.

US Mobile Providers - All have native IPv6 or dual-stack support - so everyone with mobile access has IPv6
US Broadband Providers - Majority have dual-stack support - so most home users have IPv6
Public Cloud Providers - All should have dual-stack support by the end of 2016 - so anyone deploying services or apps in the cloud has IPv6
Content Providers - All have native IPv6 or dual-stack support - so majority of content to be consumed is available over IPv6

So what is left?
Enterprise and Commercial Business
Federal, State and Local Government
Higher Education

With Google IPv6 Statistics for the US market now reporting close to 30% of traffic hitting Google as IPv6 it seems it is okay to label those who are remaining as late adopters or laggards. It is time for those in that category to start getting their adoption plans done and start implementing. I'm pretty sure not communicating natively with about 1/3 of the Internet is not an acceptable technology stance but I am open to other opinions. Let me know your thought!
- Ed

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