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[Bowdon]

EE Makes Progress on IPv6 Upgrade for their UK Mobile Network

Mobile operator EE has revealed that they’ve “switched on” IPv6 Internet addresses for new subscribers during 2016 H2 (a mix of dual-stack with IPv4 and some IPv6-only), at least for those with supporting devices (legacy devices remain on IPv4). Work will now begin to migrate their existing users.

Internet Protocol (IP) addresses are how you identify your connection online and without them you can’t use Internet services. At present most mobile operators still make use of IPv4 and often adopt a form of CGNAT (IP address sharing) in order to make their addresses last longer, partly because new IPv4s are no longer being distributed (they’ve run out).

As such the whole system will eventually need to be moved over to the new IPv6 standard, which are significantly longer and shouldn’t run out any time soon (example address: 2001:cdba::2257:9652). But in the meantime a dual-stack system is usually adopted so that IPv4 and IPv6 can continue to run side-by-side until everybody is ready to switch off IPv4 (that won’t happen for many years).