IPv6 in the UK: Adoption Rates, Business Benefits, and How to Check Your Readiness
IPv4 addresses are exhausted. IPv6 adoption in the UK is growing but uneven across ISPs and businesses. Here's what you need to know and how to check your IPv6 readiness.
The IPv4 Exhaustion Problem
The internet was built on IPv4, which provides approximately 4.3 billion unique addresses. That number was exhausted at the global registry level in 2011. RIPE NCC β the European internet registry covering the UK β reached its final /8 IPv4 allocation in 2019. New UK organisations can no longer obtain fresh IPv4 addresses from the registry; they must buy them on the secondary market at significant cost, or deploy IPv6.
IPv6: What Changes
IPv6 uses 128-bit addresses instead of 32-bit, providing 340 undecillion unique addresses β enough for every device on earth to have its own public IP, many times over. Every device, not just routers, can have a globally routable address β eliminating the complexity of NAT (Network Address Translation) that has become necessary under IPv4 exhaustion.
IPv6 also brings built-in security improvements: IPsec is mandatory in the protocol specification, and stateless address autoconfiguration (SLAAC) simplifies network administration.
UK IPv6 Adoption
UK IPv6 adoption is growing but uneven. BT's consumer broadband network (EE and Plusnet included) has rolled out IPv6 to a substantial proportion of its subscriber base. Sky Broadband began IPv6 deployment in 2023. Virgin Media (O2) supports IPv6 on its DOCSIS 3.1 network. However, many UK business broadband lines from smaller ISPs, and most corporate WAN connections, remain IPv4-only.
VP Pulse's IPv6 Tracker tile monitors UK IPv6 adoption trends using data from RIPE NCC, showing the proportion of UK internet traffic flowing over IPv6.
Checking Your IPv6 Readiness
VP Pulse's domain scan checks whether your domain has AAAA records (IPv6 addresses) in addition to A records (IPv4). A domain with both record types is dual-stack and reachable via either protocol. A domain with only A records is IPv4-only β it remains reachable to all current users, but may face connectivity issues as IPv6-only networks become more common.
Business Considerations
- Public-facing websites: Ensure your CDN or hosting provider supports IPv6 (Cloudflare, Vercel, and AWS CloudFront all support IPv6 by default)
- Internal networks: Plan for dual-stack deployment β running IPv4 and IPv6 in parallel during transition
- Firewalls: IPv6 traffic must be separately firewalled β many organisations block IPv6 by default, inadvertently creating a security gap if devices obtain IPv6 addresses via SLAAC
- VPNs: Check that your remote access VPN tunnels IPv6 traffic correctly β IPv6 leakage through VPN tunnels is a common privacy issue
DNS and IPv6
AAAA records work alongside A records in DNS. Publishing AAAA records for your domain costs nothing and typically improves performance for IPv6-connected users (avoiding NAT64 translation overhead). If your hosting provider supports IPv6, enable it β it is usually a single configuration change.
Check whether your domain is IPv6-ready using VP Pulse's domain scan tool. The scan shows A and AAAA record presence, DNSSEC status, and overall DNS health.