Apple Pushes IPv6 For iOS 9

June 18, 2015 at 2:17 pm By

When iOS 9 is released developers and iPhone users should expect IPv6 to be the driving traffic router for their mobile devices.

“Because IPv6 support is so critical to ensuring your applications work across the world for every customer, we are making it an App Store submission requirement, starting with iOS 9,” said Apple’s VP of Core OS Sebastien Marineau at the World Wide Developers Conference, according to Ars Technica.

IPv6 is still in the developmental stage so it isn’t likely that developers and Apple users will see the change anytime soon. So far, you are still able to navigate Apple, Microsoft, Google, Yahoo, Facebook and Wikipedia websites under IPv6, as well as send and receive e-mails, according to Iljitsch van Beijnum of Ars. 

But as it stands, IPv6 is not ready to go and could just be wishful thinking at this point in time.

“IPv4 is not going away any time soon, and for some years to come it’s not the IPv6-only networks that will provide services to customers,” said Geoff Huston, chief scientist at APNIC.

“It’s just not quite there yet. For years to come we need to operate the Internet in a mode that supports IPv6 and IPv4 together in Dual Stack mode. The operational premise for today’s devices and apps is simple: ‘Do IPv6 if you can, and fall back to IPv4 if you must.’ So how well is Apple doing in a dual stack world? Not as well as I would want.”

Still Apple made the promise that come iOS 9 users should expect the move, due to the fact that IPv4 addresses are becoming depleted and cell carriers are looking for a way around it, at least so says, Prabhakar Lakhera, according to the article. This is enough cause for Apple to begin the process of making sure their applications are IPv6 ready.

Read the full story for more on the routing switch.