Technology @beehaw.org marco @beehaw.org 1 yr. ago

Can you guess the top 5 countries by IPv6 usage?

spoiler

Via https://radar.cloudflare.com/adoption-and-usage

Here is a different source with slightly different results https://www.6connect.com/blog/global-adoption-of-ipv6-top-ten-countries/

For fun you can comment your guesses first :)

15 comments

surprising there's no china, with billions of connected devices. Maybe you don't need many public ipv4 when you run a country-wide LAN with limited internet access
- Country-wide LAN
  
  That is, by definition, a WAN.
  
  Maybe a CAN?
  Country Area Network :p
  
  Now I wonder if the network of Vatican City is considered a WAN. Because there are likely companies with LANs larger than that.
- There may have been some restriction or legislative reason regarding ipv6 until recently - China has gone from <5% to nearly 30% IPv6 capable since 2019: https://stats.labs.apnic.net/ipv6/CN
Governments should require IPv6 support for any online service or connected device they buy. If that's not a requirement for (sub)contractors, then they won't put effort into it.

This kind of requirements might also exclude a lot of crappy devices/services that have an outdated tech stack.
- A common requirement in government contracts is "there must be no IPv6 support, and if there is it must be verifiably disabled to decrease the size of the vulnerability surface."
  
  Many years ago, that misconfigured firewall that let IPv6 traffic through without even bothering to log it, resulting in a years-long compromise scared a lot of govvies, but unfortunately it taught them the wrong lesson.
  
  Source: I'm a former Beltway Bandit.
  
  The wrong lesson?
  
  I'm not sure how reducing your attack surface area is the wrong lesson here.
I'd have guessed mostly countries which were late to the v4 distribution to be in there - but apart from India and Malaysia everyone should have enough v4.

I guess the long delays combined with changes in v4 usage by cloud hosters gobbling up any v4 addresses while also not properly doing v6 yet changed the situation also in countries which should have had more or less sufficient v4 reserves.

It's still shocking how long it is taking. I stopped doing IPv6 workshops back in 2006 as I got tired of waiting - and had a few years of no v6 usage myself after sixxs shut down. I only could get proper v6 at home last year.
Romania

Sweden

Greenland

South Africa

Cyprus

Just random answers, since you're question kinda implies it won't be full with obvious looking countries
Saudi Arabia is there? I would've NEVER guessed.

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