The end of IPv4 addresses has been predicted for 15 years and yet has not been achieved. iX wanted to know what is stopping IT departments from moving to IPv6. The reason for the survey was the announcement by AWS that it would charge fees not only for unused public IPv4 addresses, but also for those that are actually used. That's why we asked what the actual situation is with the use of IPv4 addresses in public networks and especially in the cloud.
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The result: IPv6 is still not a real alternative to IPv4. Of the 3,000 or so participants, 48 percent work exclusively with IPv4, 24 percent work largely with IPv4, 22 percent work with dual stack and 5 percent only work with IPv4 in exceptional cases or no longer at all.
When asked “Why still IPv4?” the answers were evenly distributed (see figure). Two camps emerged from the free text answers: One adheres to the “Never change a running system” strategy. The other faces significant hurdles – in IT security, firewalls and routing, systems, hardware and software, customers, Internet services, providers and fiber optic access and cell phone networks. The complexity of IPv6, the lack of time for training, a lack of experience, the significantly higher effort, even with dual stacking, and blockages by superiors and colleagues were mentioned, as was the lack of an overview of the consequences and protocol properties of IPv6.
Accordingly, 48 percent of respondents have no transition strategy, 19 percent want to accomplish the transition with dual stacking and 26 percent want to stay with dual stacking as long as possible. One word comes up particularly frequently in the free text answers: Wait, wait for the provider, new hardware, new management or an IPv6 alternative. One large group, the other wants to wait as long as possible – 62 percent have no roadmap for a change.
What was striking was the distribution of answers when asked about the costs of provider-bound IPv4 addresses, as 38 percent of those surveyed rent addresses from cloud providers, while 39 percent do not use a public cloud. IP addresses are currently a high cost factor for only a very small number of cloud users, namely 4 percent, and for 5 percent when AWS charges fees. For the rest, the costs are of little or no relevance at all.
This distribution depends on the situation: There are no costs for anyone who does not use IPv4 addresses in the public cloud or who uses their own IPv4 addresses or whose cloud provider does not charge any fees for this. Other hyperscalers such as Azure or local providers such as Hetzner continue to charge low fees, which are not significant in the cloud package. In other companies, cloud computing only makes up a small part of IT or the IPv4 addresses come from different sources.
Accordingly, only 4 percent want to change the way they deal with provider-bound IPv4 addresses. A quarter have not yet decided, 71 percent will not change anything, partly because AWS does not allow it (see “Answers from the iX survey on IPv4”).
Answers from the iX survey on IPv4
Why are you still using IPv4 addresses?
- The decision-makers do not understand IPv6.
- Convenience, addresses that are too long, NAT problems, filtered IPv6 ranges.
- The security measures are (…) designed for IPv4; Dual stack operation would formally double the effort.
- IPv6 only works well, unfortunately there are still too many broken mail servers, firewalls, and a lack of IPv6 support on the Internet. Therefore (…) a few IPv4 addresses.
- Certain services only run with v4, the rest are dual stack. Known bugs: IPv6 MTU incorrect on AVM/Fritz, IPv6 fragment delivery in the (…) backbone, IPv6 does not work for our spam filter (…), IPv6 bugs after power-up on Intel WiFi NICs.
- The classic: It has always been done this way (…).
What is your transition strategy?
- IPv4 until the bitter end.
- Wait for IPv7 that supports NAT.
- Waiting for money and/or a miracle (IPv8 or something).
- Every few years we evaluate whether all customers can still connect if IPv4 is no longer applicable.
- NAT on NAT on NAT.
Will AWS charging for used IPv4 addresses change your use of IPv4 addresses?
- The costs are so low compared to switching to IPv6 that they are not noticeable (…).
- Not even AWS Cloudfront can do IPv6, I would like to switch!
- No change, we are a large company, we do not pay list prices.
- In some cases, AWS makes it almost impossible to do without Public IPv4, as some AWS services themselves cannot be accessed via v6, e.g. B. the container registry (ECR).
(sun)