YouTube, one of the most popular, biggest time-wasters and bandwidth hogs on the web is now IPv6 too. Hurricane Electric, whose IPv6 backbone is the largest in the world, reports a 30x increase in IPv6 traffic originating from YouTube. Martin Levy, Director of IPv6 Strategy at Hurricane Electric told PCWorld in a recent article
“On Thursday, midday California time, we saw a large amount of inbound IPv6 traffic, which we knew came from Google .. IPv6 traffic came into ISPs from all over the world when Google turned up its IPv6 traffic on YouTube.” Levy continued, “IPv6 is being supported at many different Google data centers. We’re talking about a traffic spike that is 30-to-1 type ratios. In other words, 30 times more IPv6 traffic is coming out of Google’s data centers than before.”
The YouTube IPv6 traffic appears to be production, as opposed to a test because it has remained steady since it started and is following normal usage patterns, Levy told PCWorld, “This IPv6 traffic is mimicking classic end-user bandwidth shaping … It’s not machine driven; it’s human eyeball driven.”
Industry observers hailed the YouTube upgrade as a sign of the growing momentum for the next-generation Internet protocol, “This is not some IPv6-enabled scientific site…This is the mainstream media” Levy observes.
NetworkWorld reports that Google is anticipating IPv6 traffic growth as more devices such as LTE handsets and set-top boxes ship with IPv6 support. Google already supports IPv6 with its Search, Alerts, Docs, Finance, Gmail, Health, iGoogle, News, Reader, Picasa, Maps, Wave, Chrome, and Android products.
Ralph Bach has been in IT long enough to know better and has blogged from his Bach Seat about IT, careers, and anything else that catches his attention since 2005. You can follow him on LinkedIn, Facebook, and Twitter. Email the Bach Seat here.