IPv6 was first proposed by the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) in the late 1990s, but it wasn’t until July 2017 that it became ratified.

Instead, IPv4, a protocol first introduced way back in 1983, is the foundation for most enterprise networks – despite IPv6 offering networks a considerably wider pool of IP addresses.

While the protocol has recently been making strides in segments like SD-WAN, and has risen from less than 1% to somewhere between 30% and 40% in terms of use today, IPv6 continues to lag in competition with IPv4 as well as dual-stack networks.

Which is why researchers from the WIDE project and Max Planck Institute for Informatics are recommending IPv6 be put front and center.

Under current IETF best practices (RFC3901), DNS servers, which convert human-readable domain names into machine-readable IP addresses, are encouraged to cover IPv4.

In a recently published note, first spotted by The Register, the researchers instead call on the IETF to update RFC3901 to IPv6 – given the best practice was put in place back in 2004.

“[RFC3901] was initially written at a time when IPv6 deployment was not widespread, focusing primarily on maintaining name space continuity within the IPv4 landscape,” the researchers wrote.

Some two decades later, the experts suggest that IPv6 compatibility be encouraged for authoritative DNS servers, “as well as recursive and stub DNS resolvers.”

“While transitional technologies and dual-stack setups may mitigate some of the issues of DNS resolution in a mixed protocol-version internet, making DNS data accessible over both IPv4 and IPv6 is the most robust and flexible approach, as it allows resolvers to reach the information they need without requiring intermediary translation or forwarding services which may introduce additional failure cases," the researchers wrote.

Beyond its ability to handle more internet addresses than IPv4, IPv6 is also somewhat more secure than its predecessor. IPv6 was designed with IPsec support built into the protocol, unlike IPv4, where it is optional. However, IPv6 traffic is not automatically encrypted – encryption still depends on whether IPsec is configured and enabled. Its design does, however, allow IPsec to be applied more broadly (for example, to ICMPv6), offering security options not practical in IPv4.

IPv6 isn’t without its flaws, however, as attackers are increasingly using IPv6 to scan and attack networks.

Crowdsec CEO warned SDxCentral back in 2023 that network operators were far behind in preparing for IPv6 attack fronts. In October 2022, the firm saw just 10% of IP addresses related to malicious activity being from IPv6 addresses. By the following June, that figure rose by 100%.