Quality of IPv6 enablement of universities: An international study

Abstract

This paper presents the findings of the first known large scale, quantitative study of the quality of IPv6 enablement of university websites. A mathematical algorithm that leverages multiple sources of data gathered from V6Sonar © "agents" distributed globally across multiple locations, was used to calculate the IPv6 effectiveness of 1000 university websites. In this study, three web-based IPv6 accessibility tools were used to investigate the IPv6 accessibility (DNS records) of the websites of 1000 universities from 59 countries. Once accessibility was verified, a web-based user experience monitoring platform was used to collect extensive data measuring the IPv6 effectiveness of the IPv6 accessible web sites. The monitoring platform utilized agents deployed in various geographic locations in North America, Europe, and Asia to poll each university website. The data collected in this study reveals the external facing Web service accessibility for each university and the IPv6 effectiveness of these services, if accessible. An analysis of the enablement and effectiveness of the university websites were made in respect to the website's assigned Regional Internet Registry (RIR) geographic region. The implications of the findings are that citizens worldwide, who use IPv6 to access the resources offered by universities, may experience performance degradation, variability in performance, and at times, no IPv6 connectivity at all. In addition, accessibility of a university website over IPv6 may be seen as a metric of the institution's overall technological readiness.