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IPv6: Switzerland is now the world's biggest adopter

Switzerland has overtaken nearest rival Romania as the world's IPv6 leader, with a little help from its biggest telco.
Written by Jo Best, Contributor

Switzerland has raced to the top of the league table of world IPv6 adoption.

IPv6 adoption stands at 10.11 percent in Switzerland – the highest penetration of any country, according to stats from Google, which takes a snapshot of adoption by measuring the proportion of users that access Google services over IPv6.

Switzerland is thought to have taken the top spot in late May, overtaking nearest rival Romania which has led IPv6 adoption for around a year. Romania's IPv6 adoption now stands at 9.02 percent, Google says.

Cisco also measures IPv6 progress by allotting each country a score based on various individually-weighted elements, including the number of IPv6-enabled websites and transit networks, users on IPv6, and activity around IPv6 prefixes (whether they've been requested or are live).

It too has found that Switzerland is leading IPv6, with an overall deployment score of 89.78 percent, compared to Romania's 75.82 percent.

On IPv6 users alone, Cisco's stats chime with Google's: Switzerland has 10.99 percent, while it's 8.95 percent for Romania.

It's been suggested that the sudden spike in Switzerland's IPv6 adoption has been down to Swisscom, the country's biggest telco with around 55 percent of the broadband market and 60 percent of mobile, moving to adopt it.

"The good position is indeed thanks to Swisscom's efforts in IPv6. So far we have made about 560,000 lines ready for IPv6," a spokesman for the company said.

IPv6 adoption got a significant push in June last year, when a number of tech's big names — including Facebook and Google — took part in World IPv6 Day, and enabled IPv6 on several of their sites.

Adoption worldwide currently stands at 1.29 percent, according to Google's user stats. In the UK, it's just 0.19 percent while it's reached 2.75 percent in the US.

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