Curtin University is the highest ranking Australian university for IPv6 adoption, coming in tenth place among universities in the world, according to Akamai’s latest State of the Internet report.
IPv6 provides about 340 undecillion IP addresses, compared to 4 billion addresses under IPv4. As the number of Internet-connected devices has grown, exhaustion of IPv4 addresses has necessitated the adoption of IPv6.
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Akamai's report, which was for the third quarter of 2013, found 39 per cent of all Curtin University's traffic requests were over IPv6.
However, Australia as a whole is lagging behind in IPv6 adoption, ranked as number 32 in the world. Only 0.22 per cent of requests to Akamai were over IPv6, Akamai said.
Europe has taken the lead on IPv6 adoption, with seven European nations in the top 10, Akamai said. Japan was the only country in the Asia Pacific to be represented on the list.
Over the course of Q3 2013, IPv6 traffic levels on the Akamai network grew from 176,000 hits per second to more than 277,000 hits per second, Akamai said in the report.
“Colleges and universities are early adopters of IPv6, with schools in Brazil, Australia, Canada, the Czech Republic, and the United States showing some of the highest levels of IPv6 adoption,” Akamai said.
Also, more businesses than consumers connected through IPv6, Akamai said.
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“IPv6 traffic continued to exhibit a cyclical weekly pattern, with volumes dipping each Saturday, likely indicating a greater level of IPv6 adoption across corporate/enterprise networks than consumer ISPs."
Adam Bender covers telco and enterprise tech issues for Computerworld and is the author of a dystopian novel about surveillance. Follow him on Twitter: @WatchAdam
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