Google data shows IPv6 carried 50.1% of internet traffic for a single day in March, a symbolic milestone for the long-delayed protocol

Google's IPv6 tracking data recorded that on March 28th, 50.1% of traffic accessing its services used IPv6, up from 46.33% a year earlier, though other sources including Cloudflare and APNIC put IPv6 adoption lower at 40% and 43% respectively, meaning the milestone is notable but not definitive proof of IPv6 dominance. IPv6 was designed to replace IPv4 after it became clear that IPv4's 4.3 billion available addresses would be insufficient for the growing number of internet-connected devices, with the newer protocol offering effectively unlimited addressing capacity. Adoption has been slow for decades due to IPv6's lack of compelling new features and the workaround of network address translation allowing many devices to share a single IPv4 address, though some regions including North America and Asia-Pacific passed 50% adoption years ago.