CircleID

RIPE Labs graph looks at IPv6 RIPEness rate of all countries in the RIPE NCC service region as measured in May 2011. (Click to Enlarge)A year ago, the RIPE NCC introduced IPv6 RIPEness — a system that rates IPv6 deployment of Local Internet Registries (LIRs) based on the following criteria:

• The LIR gets one star if it has an IPv6 allocation

Additional stars can be earned if,

• The address prefix is routed on the Internet
• A route6 object is registered in the RIPE Database
• Reverse DNS has been set up

In an earlier post on CircleID, "IPv6 RIPEness: the hard numbers on ISPs and Deployment Rates", published in April 2010, we saw that:

• 27% of all LIRs (6,748 at the time) had IPv6 address space (one star), and
• 8% of all LIRs (or a total of 540) had all four stars

Now, one year later, the numbers have gone up:

• 41% of all LIRs have IPv6 address space, and
• 13% have all four stars

In absolute numbers: more than 3,000 LIRs have IPv6 address space. This means that the RIPE NCC has made more than 1,100 IPv6 allocations within 12 months.

It is also interesting to look at the development in some countries:

• Slovenia is still the winner: More than 80% of all LIRs in that country have an IPv6 allocation, and almost half of them have all four stars
• Armenia is now second on the list: 72% of all LIRs have an IPv6 allocation (45% last year)

You might notice that some countries that had at least one or two stars previously now show no IPv6 RIPEness anymore. This is due to mergers or closures of LIRs in these countries and does not mean that IPv6 address space has been returned or revoked.

Even though we are happy to see progress, many LIRs have not yet requested IPv6 address space from the RIPE NCC. We hope that the IPv6 RIPEness system is helping to encourage LIRs to deploy IPv6. Note that all LIRs that reach all four stars receive free t-shirts and now also an IPv6-enabled fridge magnet from the RIPE NCC :)

For more background information, please refer to the article on RIPE Labs: IPv6 RIPEness — One Year Later.

By Daniel Karrenberg, Chief Scientist at the RIPE NCC

Related topics: Access Providers, DNS, IP Addressing, IPv6, Regional Registries