A research collaboration between the University of Pennsylvania and Comcast has determined that IPv6 download speeds are "clearly much slower" than IPv4, according to coverage in Network World. This is, to be generous, not good news as content and service providers race towards the end of IPv4 addresses and the full-scale launch of IPv6.
Right now only 0.15 percent of the top one million top websites are IPv6 enabled, so 99 percent of the Internet's content is "unreachable via native IPv6," according to the story, which examines the reason for the speed discrepancies, including the fact that "networks are not yet tuned to optimize IPv6 performance."
The problem, the story concludes, is that time is an enemy because IPv4 addresses run out this year and IPv6, ready or not, has to step in and pick up the slack. "Network service providers and content providers need to get cracking to identify and fix IPv6 performance problems wherever they may lurk," the article concludes.
For more:
- Network World has this story
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