The government statistician reports that, at June 2012, 33 percent of ISPs had IPv6 available to subscribers. 11 percent intended to have it available within six months, 17 percent between six months to one year, 28 percent between one to two years, and a further 11 percent between two to four years. 11 percent of ISPs had no plans to make IPv6 available.

These figures are an improvement, albeit slight, on the percentage of ISPs who made IPv6 available last year.

The figures were contained deep within Statistics New Zealand’s latest Internet Service Provider Survey, which annually surveys 70 ISPs.

More generally (not related to IPv6), the survey also found that 93 percent of subscribers (over 1.6 million people) are using a broadband connection. DSL is the most common connection method, with over 1.1 million subscribers. Fibre optic connections are the least common.

96% of subscribers are downloading at between 1.5 and 24 megabits per second.

There has also been a significant rise in higher data caps (those with a cap of 20GB or more), and the average subscriber consumed an estimated 16GB of data in the year ended June 2012, says Statistics New Zealand.

More than half the population are now acessing the Internet via a mobile phone, and 50 percent of ISPs monitor their subscribers’ security – notably for botnets.

More information about the survey can be read at:
www.stats.govt.nz/browse_for_stats/industry_sectors/information_technology_and_communications/ISPSurvey_HOTPJun12/Commentary.aspx

Local awareness and adoption of IPv6 – the ‘next generation’ Internet addressing schema – appears to be maturing, with a recent survey by the IPv6 Task Force indicating an increase in the number of New Zealand organisations planning to implement the protocol.

IPv6 is the ‘next-generation’ method of Internet addressing and is being formally adopted worldwide as the number of existing IPv4 addresses dries up.

The fourth annual ‘CIO Survey’ was conducted earlier this year by the New Zealand IPv6 Task Force in an effort to assess the IPv6-readiness of New Zealand’s largest organisations. It was sent to the country’s Top 100 CIOs as ranked by MIS Magazine, and had a response rate of 26 percent.

Among the survey findings:

• 78% of respondents plan to enable IPv6 on their public Internet services, compared with 44% in 2009.
• 85% of those planning to deploy IPv6 say they will do so in parallel with IPv4. This compares with 43% in 2009.
• 73% of respondents say IPv6 is ‘very’ or ‘extremely important’ when buying ICT equipment, compared with 29% in 2009.
• 92% of respondents are aware that the Asia Pacific region has exhausted its supply of IPv4 addresses, compared with 70% in 2009 who were aware of the impending run-out.
• Only 58% of respondents says IPv6 features in their organisation’s future IT training requirements.

Task Force Convenor Murray Milner acknowledges the survey’s low response rate but says it acts as a barometer of sorts in understanding the overall state of IPv6 readiness in New Zealand.

“We note, for example, that many more organisations appear to be more aware of the risks associated with not adopting IPv6, and the opportunities that adoption gives rise to,” he says.

The IPv6 Task Force also recently surveyed New Zealand telecommunications carriers and service providers to understand how well prepared they are to cope with the IPv6 transition. That survey had a response rate of 37 percent.

61% of respondents to the Carrier & ISP Survey provide IPv6-enabled products and services, compared with 46% in 2011. 85% have evaluated IPv6 support and features in Consumer Premises Equipment, such as home modems and routers, and 79% maintain an IPv6 test environment.

Milner says a challenge this year for both surveys was the lower-than-expected response rates. He advises caution when interpreting the survey numbers.

“The Task Force will keep both surveys running to obtain a clearer view over the long term. The findings do however appear to back up our benchmarking metrics, which offer an alternative, machine-based view of the state of New Zealand’s IPv6 readiness.

“We are comfortable enough with the overall results to suggest that New Zealand’s IPv6 story is moving in the right direction,” he says.

Earlier this year IPv6 received significant profile via the global World IPv6 Launch and, alongside the work of the Task Force, Milner says this appears to have spurred a degree of activity in New Zealand.

“We’re pleased to see more organisations planning to adopt IPv6. The growth and development of the global Internet depends on IPv6 and, for organisations with an Internet presence, it has now become an inescapable requirement.”

Full summaries of both surveys are available below:

IPv6 CIO Survey – 2009 / 2012

IPv6 Carrier & ISP Survey – 2011 / 2012

More information about the New Zealand IPv6 Task Force’s activities is available at www.ipv6.org.nz .

For further comment please contact:

Dr Murray Milner
Convenor
New Zealand IPv6 Task Force
027 443 0120
[email protected]

As part of this programme we are repeating our benchmarking survey with New Zealand Internet providers, to assess IPv6 readiness. This survey was conducted for the first time last year, and results from this year’s survey will be used longitudinally to highlight trends in service provider progress with IPv6.

The survey is being sent to all TCF and ISPANZ members.

The Task Force is very keen to understand how New Zealand CIOs and IT departments are progressing with IPv6 and, as with previous years, the survey has been sent to the country’s Top 100 CIOs as ranked by MIS Magazine.

http://cio.co.nz/cio.nsf/ciomis

The survey provides a valuable reference point in understanding the state of IPv6 readiness in New Zealand, both for public consumption and for organisations’ own ICT plans.

For more information about the survey please contact:

Campbell Gardiner
Secretariat
IPv6 Task Force
[email protected]

Two surveys have been conducted – the third annual IPv6 Readiness Survey of New Zealand’s top 100 organisations by number of computing devices, and an inaugural survey of ISPs and Carriers.

IPv6 Readiness Survey – top 100
The third annual IPv6 Readiness Survey was conducted in May/June 2011, with public and private sector Chief Information Officers (CIOs) asked about their organisation’s IPv6 readiness and plans for adoption.

The response rate this year was 34 percent, compared with a 46 percent response rate in 2010 and 37 percent in 2009.

A summary of results, including comparisons with previous years, is now available:
IPv6 Readiness Survey 2011 – summary of results (.PDF)

Key points below:

• Universal awareness of IPv4 address expiry has occurred.
• Slight growth in respondents IPv6-enabled – complimented by 61% indicating enablement within 1-2 years compared with 39% in 2010.
• Circa 50% of respondents aware IPv6 is an opportunity or risk.
• Strong indications that awareness and knowledge has improved as increased numbers of respondents confirm deployment planning is occurring and requirements for IPv6 are included in RFI’s & RFP’s & purchasing decisions.
• 74% of respondents indicate a reliance on outsourced support.
• 18% of respondents indicate they have or are considering changing service providers due to their inability to provide IPv6 services.
• This year’s survey includes stronger representation from private sector organisations. It also includes an increase in both the number of devices represented and IPv6 awareness across both Private and Public sector. This is a very encouraging shift and indicates that many organisations now have strategies and plans in place.

ISP/Carrier Survey
The survey of  New Zealand service providers was conducted in June/July 2011, with ISPs and carriers asked about their preparations around the IPv6 addressing scheme.

39 service provider organisations were approached, with a 64 percent response rate.

This is understood to be the first survey of its kind in New Zealand and the Task Force intends following up with further surveys to gauge relative change.

A summary of results is available below:
ISP Carrier Survey 2011 – summary of results (.PDF)

Key points below:

• In the ISP and Carrier community work is going on behind the scenes, with 75% of respondents having a test environment for IPv6.
• 71% of respondents have or are evaluating CPE. From the comments provided, consumer CPE providers appear to be behind enterprise providers, and some respondents claim WAN CPE is not readily available as yet.
• 88% of respondents said they do not currently provide FAQ’s or support for residential customers – which isn’t surprising given many of the respondents don’t provide residential services and many claim that CPE is not viable as yet.

This benchmarking survey is a work-in-progress but preliminary results indicate positive trends around awareness and planning and creation of testing environments. 98 percent of respondents, for instance, have IPv6 test facilities.

While there are clear leaders and laggards in terms of service delivery, less encouraging is the fact that vendor support and availability of CPE may be a constraint.

Aggregated survey results will be made available later in July.

The New Zealand IPv6 Readiness Survey is an annual piece of research conducted by the New Zealand IPv6 Task Force. It surveys the top 100 organisations in New Zealand[1] by number of computing devices, and provides a valuable reference point in understanding the state of IPv6 readiness in New Zealand.

The 2011 survey ran from 16 May to 8 June, with a 33 percent response rate. Preliminary results are available in the PDF document below:

2011 New Zealand IPv6 Readiness Survey – preliminary results

These are takeaways from the second IPv6 Readiness Survey of top 100 CIOs, available at:
http://internetnz.net.nz/our-work/openness/ipv6 .

Another observation is that around half of the organisations that responded still have no IPv6 plans in place (46% no plans for externally facing IPv6, 54% no plans for IPv6 on internal networks).

InternetNZ, in working to protect and promote the Internet and its benefits for all New Zealanders, undertakes this crucial survey for the New Zealand IPv6 Task Force. The Task Force is an across-industry group supported by InternetNZ, the Ministry of Ecomonic Development and many organisations from the ICT industry.

IPv6 is the replacement for the long-standing Internet Protocol IPv4, which is limited to 4 billion addresses, inadequate considering the global population and exponential growth in Internet use. IPv6 has 340 billion billion billion billion addresses, enabling an end-to-end connection to any person, computer or machine that connects to the Internet.

NEED FOR PLANNING
“Businesses need a plan to adopt IPv6 alongside their existing IPv4 in their networks and websites, and they need that plan yesterday,” says Task Force Convenor Dr Murray Milner. “It is relatively low cost if the equipment and skills are acquired over time as equipment is replaced. It will be high cost and high risk if it has to be done in a hurry later. Therefore, management support and planning are crucial.”

“It may be tempting for business managers to dismiss their need for IPv6 by stating that they will not require any more IP addresses in the near future,” says Task Force technical lead Dean Pemberton. “However, they may run the risk of not being able to communicate effectively with partners or potential customers who have chosen to make IPv6 their preferred method of communication. Adopting IPv6 is as much about ensuring that you can continue to communicate with everyone on the Internet as it is about requiring additional Internet addresses”.

HUGE BENEFITS
InternetNZ Chief Executive Vikram Kumar says the benefits of IPv6 will be huge as the number of devices that people carry and have in their homes and businesses escalate. “New mobile networks, security systems, and applications we haven’t even thought of yet will utilise IPv6. Mass applications of direct machine-to-machine communication also become practical – the incoming ‘Internet of Things’.”

“As long as people view this as a cost and not an opportunity, the ‘New Internet’ message will not get though to business managers.”

As the number of available IPv4 addresses runs out, some networks and businesses globally will only be able to connect via IPv6, so connections to those networks through IPv4 will need to go through gateways or translators. This will hinder services that rely on direct connections and provide a sub-par experience of the Internet to those caught out.

CONSUMER EQUIPMENT
Ultimately New Zealand consumers will also need to move their equipment to IPv6 as they upgrade their broadband connections. This involves replacing home routers or modems.

“It would be a travesty if the new fibre networks are not IPv6-enabled by default, and some way needs to be found to ensure that equipment is installed. The Task Force has also heard of initiatives to upgrade ADSL modem technology to IPv6 and highly encourages Internet Service Providers and equipment manufacturers to increase their efforts in this regard,” says Milner.

One piece of good news in the survey is the increased planning by enterprise IT departments for their websites to be available via IPv6. This is relatively easy to implement and the .nz registry, a subsidiary of InternetNZ, has assisted here by being IPv6 capable for some time.

“It is also positive to see that IPv6 skills are generally available (83%), and that telecommunications firms are starting to talk more (30%) to their customers about IPv6. We expect they will be more confident to promote these services as their own experience with the technology grows,” says Milner.

Encouragingly, more than half of respondents said they were at least adequately informed about IPv6, and 70 percent were aware that all IPv4 addresses would be allocated by 2012.

Many organisations however had no plans to IPv6-enable their customer facing services, and for those that did the transition would mostly begin two years hence.

The survey suggested that the majority of networks support IPv6 or are upgradeable, but for most respondents IPv6 was not a factor in their purchasing decisions.

There was some good news coming from the survey in terms of the support available internally and from contractors, with 43 per cent having access to in-house support and 49 percent to outsourced.

The survey highlights are available at the following link (PowerPoint file):
2009 New Zealand IPv6 Readiness Survey