Beyond the broad participation in World IPv6 Launch Day last month, evidence of this shift can be found on the European Regional Internet Registry, RIPE NCC website. This page presents a chart illustrating the percentage of IPv6 networks as a percentage of total networks advertised on the Internet over time.

The percentage of IPv6 networks has surpassed 13 per cent, up from 10 per cent a year ago. From an absolute quantity perspective, over 5,500 IPv6 networks are now being advertised, up from 3,800 a year ago, a 46 per cent increase. This means that a growing number of organizations have already deployed IPv6 to enable IPv6 Internet communications.

And the number of IPv6 users is expected to grow as the global demand for IP addresses increases unabated, driven by explosive rates of mobile and wireless subscriber growth, particularly in the eastern hemisphere where IPv4 address space is already depleted. And evolving "smart" initiatives like smart cars, smart homes, etc, featuring vast distribution of IP-addressable probes and devices for remote monitoring and control, promise to be massive consumers of IP addresses.

At BT, we've been conducting periodic surveys over the last seven years to gauge IPv6 interest and deployment. We concluded our most recent IPv6 survey in May and it's clear that more people are looking into IPv6 this year than in prior years. With a respondent tally of over 875, up about 50 per cent from last year's total, it's clear that interest in IPv6 continues to climb.

Key among our findings from the survey was that 13 per cent of respondents indicated that they had already deployed IPv6 across all or a portion of their networks. This is up from only five per cent last year, a substantial jump. Another 44 per cent are in the process of deploying IPv6 or will begin deployment within two years. And among those who indicated that they had not yet even considered IPv6 deployment, only 12 per cent of respondents fell into this category this year, down from 16 per cent last year.