Akamai Technologies today released its Third Quarter, 2015 State of the Internet Report with updates on IPv4 exhaustion and IPv6 adoption: “While we did observe an increase in the number of unique IPv4 addresses connecting to Akamai, the third quarter of 2015 saw the Regional Internet Registry (RIR) for North America completely exhaust its available inventory of IPv4 address space,” says David Belson, editor of the State of the Internet Report. Belson also notes that the continued depletion of IPv4 space, in both North America and around the world, should further spur organizations to expand or accelerate their own IPv6 adoption, particularly as the cost of obtaining IPv4 address space may rise as scarcity increases.

Available IPv4 Space Continues Steady Decline – Available IPv4 Address Pool Size by RIR, Q3 2015
Source: Akamai State of the Internet, Q3 2015 (Click to Enlarge)

IPv6 Adoption

European countries continued to dominate IPv6 adoption, taking eight of the top 10 spots. Report reveals that despite an 8.4% quarterly decline, Belgium maintained its clear lead, with more than one-third of content requests being made over IPv6—15% above second-place Switzerland.

Additional highlights from Akamai’s Third Quarter, 2015 State of the Internet Report in IPv4 and IPv6:

• Partially offsetting the second-quarter drop, the number of unique, worldwide IPv4 addresses connecting to Akamai increased by about 4.8 million in the third quarter.
• The U.K. saw IPv4 counts hold steady, while the U.S. saw a small 0.5% decline from the second quarter.
• On a global basis, close to 60% of the countries/regions saw a quarter-over-quarter increase in unique IPv4 address counts in the third quarter, compared with roughly half in the second quarter
• 43 countries/regions saw IPv4 address counts grow 10% or more, while 27 saw counts decline 10% or more as compared with the previous quarter.
• European countries continued to dominate the top 10 countries/regions, taking eight of the top 10 spots with the largest percentage of content requests made to Akamai over IPv6 in the third quarter of 2015.
• Despite an 8.4% quarterly drop, Belgium again maintained a clear lead, with 35% of content requests being made over IPv6.
• Verizon Wireless (72%) and Belgium’s Telenet (53%) continued to lead as the two companies with more than half of their requests to Akamai made over IPv6.
• Nine of the top 20 providers had at least one in four content requests to Akamai via IPv6, down from 11 in the second quarter. However, all of the top 20—up from 17 in the previous quarter—had at least 10% of their requests to Akamai occur over IPv6.