<\/p>\n
Dual-Protocol Tipping Point<\/h2>\n
Still, some folks are operating under the misconception that they must move directly from running only IPv4 to running only IPv6.\u00a0 We know that\u00a0IPv6 is not an all-or-nothing proposition<\/a>\u00a0and that all organizations as well as the Internet backbone itself will pass through a\u00a0dual-protocol<\/a>\u00a0transition period.\u00a0 For every\u00a0Facebook<\/a>\u00a0stream that loads over IPv6, there will be one less Facebook stream that loaded over IPv4.\u00a0 The dual-protocol end-nodes and their users will be oblivious to the transport protocol used for the connection \u2013 they just want to see what their friends are posting.\u00a0 For every\u00a0Google<\/a>\u00a0search performed over IPv6, there was one fewer search results page delivered over IPv4; the search results are the same, regardless of the network transport.\u00a0 At some point there is a tipping point where the balance will start to shift from IPv4 to IPv6.\u00a0 We believe that this will come at some point but we just don\u2019t know exactly when that tipping point will occur.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Martin Gysi\u00a0(@MartinGysi<\/a>) is one such afore-mentioned IPv6 proponents who is advancing the adoption of IPv6 and scientifically predicting the future of IPv6 adoption.\u00a0 Martin is a long-time\u00a0IPv6 technologist<\/a>, writer, presenter, and technical leader at\u00a0Swisscom<\/a>.\u00a0 He has been a presenter for (and is a member of) the\u00a0V6 World Scientific Committee<\/a>. He has also\u00a0presented at Cisco Live<\/a>, and has written for the\u00a0Internet Society<\/a>.\u00a0 Last year, Martin gave a\u00a0presentation on the IPv6 deployment at Swisscom<\/a>\u00a0and his presentation included several predictions about the future.\u00a0 His presentation predicted when IPv6 Internet traffic would exceed IPv4 Internet traffic.\u00a0 On slides 13 and 14 of his presentation he made several bold claims about IPv4 and IPv6 Internet traffic (paraphrased by this author).<\/p>\n Martin also\u00a0provided a chart<\/a>\u00a0that backs up his predictions with estimates of future traffic volumes.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n His presentation caused me to consider how IPv6 is affecting IPv4 traffic volumes.\u00a0 In the remainder of this article, we will consider his mathematics and then perform our own \u201cback of the napkin calculations\u201d to validate predictions of IPv6 traffic growth and its effect on IPv4 traffic volumes.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n The first step of this process is to try to determine how fast Internet traffic is growing.\u00a0 One source of data is the\u00a0Cisco Visual Networking Index<\/a>\u00a0(VNI) Forecast for 2015 through 2020.\u00a0 From their research, Cisco predicts that \u201cAnnual global IP traffic will surpass the\u00a0zettabyte<\/a>\u00a0(ZB; 1000\u00a0exabytes [EB]<\/a>) threshold in 2016, and will reach 2.3 ZB by 2020. \u00a0Global IP traffic will reach 1.1 ZB per year or 88.7 EB (one billion gigabytes [GB]) per month in 2016. \u00a0By 2020, global IP traffic will reach 2.3 ZB per year, or 194 EB per month.\u00a0 Global IP traffic will increase nearly threefold over the next 5 years, and will have increased nearly 100-fold from 2005 to 2020. \u00a0Overall, IP traffic will grow at a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 22 percent from 2015 to 2020.\u201d\u00a0 From this and other sources, it seems that current Internet traffic volumes are increasing on average at around 30%, year-to-year.\u00a0 Wikipedia also has a page on \u201cInternet Traffic<\/a>\u201d that includes a\u00a0section on annual global Internet traffic<\/a>\u00a0amounts.\u00a0 From this data, we can create a table that combines the historical measurements with the average 30% annual growth percentage to create a prediction of the number of\u00a0Petabytes<\/a>\u00a0(PB) per year of IPv4 Internet traffic.\u00a0 Here is the table that was created based on these assumptions about the future of total Internet traffic volumes.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n The next step is to create a table that lists the percentage of Internet traffic that is IPv6 and also predicts the future of IPv6 growth.\u00a0 Many\u00a0IPv6 proponents have often included<\/a>\u00a0screen shots of the\u00a0Google\u2019s IPv6 traffic statistics<\/a>\u00a0graph to show increasing IPv6 adoption.\u00a0 Back in 2009,\u00a0Google<\/a>\u00a0was processing more than 20PB\/day data.\u00a0 Before the year 2012, there was very little interesting on this IPv6 traffic graph, but after\u00a0World IPv6 Launch<\/a>, the numbers started to increase.\u00a0 With IPv6, we can expect that the yearly doubling of IPv6 traffic won\u2019t last forever.\u00a0 It is more likely that we are in the period of acceleration between 2013 and 2018, but then after 2020, IPv6\u2019s adoption will slow as it becomes more ubiquitous.\u00a0 There will be a long-tail on the IPv6 adoption curve where the substantial legacy IPv4 systems will take many years to age out of the infrastructure.\u00a0 Here is the table of the percentage of Internet traffic that is IPv6 and the future prediction of IPv6 traffic percentage.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n What follows is a graph of this data that shows how IPv6 starts out slowly, moves through the period we are in now where traffic is doubling annually, then moves to a slower growth period as IPv6 reaches broad adoption.\u00a0 This is similar to a sine-wave shape we have seen repeated so many times in history.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n The next step is to subtract the IPv6 traffic amounts from the total Internet traffic amount that has historically been IPv4-only.\u00a0 We subtract the IPv6 amount from the IPv4 amount because transactions will occur over one or the other network-layer protocol, but not both at the same time.\u00a0 In situations where the Happy Eyeballs (RFC 6555<\/a>) method is employed, dual-protocol applications are aggressive at establishing connections and attempt to connect over both IPv4 and IPv6 simultaneously.\u00a0 This is a measure to ensure that the end-user experience is the best it can possibly be regardless of which IP protocol has end-to-end connectivity.\u00a0 However, with Happy Eyeballs, this method only doubles the amount of traffic during initial connect, which is a small amount that we are considering not substantial and, therefore, insignificant for our calculations.\u00a0 When we graph the IPv4 and the IPv6 traffic volumes, it produces the following graph.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n We can see in this graph that the IPv4 traffic volumes continue to increase, but then there is a cross-over point where IPv6 and IPv4 traffic volumes are equal.\u00a0 This appears to occur around the year 2018.\u00a0 At this point, IPv6\u2019s growth starts to become significant relative to IPv4 traffic volumes and acts to level-off the growth of IPv4.\u00a0 This cross-over point may be approaching in the next few years.\u00a0 Recently the\u00a0American Registry for Internet Numbers<\/a>\u00a0(ARIN) announced that 50% of their subscriber members now have registered IPv6 addresses and they continue to issue 60 to 100 requests each month.\u00a0 Now my graph looks surprisingly similar to\u00a0Martin\u2019s graph from slide 14<\/a>.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n Based on these results, we can endorse the conclusion that IPv6 will likely overtake IPv4.\u00a0 It appears that we have consensus that in the 2018 to 2019 timeframe, IPv6 traffic will cross the trajectory of IPv4.\u00a0 At that point, there will be equal portions of IPv4 and IPv6 traffic on the Internet.\u00a0 The discrepancies in our prediction of the cross-over point may come from the fact that I was not taking into account the effects of CGN\/LSN.\u00a0 We also both conclude that by the 2024 to 2028 timeframe that there will be only trace amounts of IPv4 traffic on the Internet.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" We Only Know What We Can Measure It should be a widely recognized rule at this point to completely disregard any\u00a0IPv6 adoption prediction\u00a0made by an IPv6 evangelist (especially this author).\u00a0 For that matter, trying to predict the future of rapid innovations in network technology can often be like grasping at straws.\u00a0 However, while the ultimate […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":321,"featured_media":2512,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"inline_featured_image":false,"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[17],"tags":[38,31],"class_list":{"0":"post-2511","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-ipv6-coe","8":"tag-ipv6","9":"tag-networking","10":"entry"},"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\nPredicting IPv4 and IPv6 Traffic Volumes<\/h2>\n
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IPv4 Internet Traffic Growth<\/h2>\n
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IPv6 Adoption Percentage<\/h2>\n
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Compare IPv4 and IPv6 Traffic Volumes<\/h2>\n
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Conclusions<\/h2>\n