Comcast celebrated Thanksgiving Day weekend by staking a claim to the world's largest native deployment of IPv6.

In his latest blog post last week, John Brzozowski, a Comcast fellow and the MSO's chief IPv6 architect, wrote that Comcast Corp. (Nasdaq: CMCSA, CMCSK) has now deployed native IPv6 support to more than 75% of its broadband network and is on track to hit 100% by early 2014. With Comcast easily the largest broadband provider in North America, that makes its native IPv6 deployment the largest in the world.

Over the last three months, Brzozowski wrote, Comcast has jumped from third place to first place in the global IPv6 network rankings, moving past both AT&T Inc. (NYSE: T) and Japan's KDDI Corp.

Indeed, the latest rankings from the Internet Society (ISOC) bear out this claim. ISOC, which ranks network operators by the percentage of IPv6 traffic they carry as well as the percentage of network deployment, found that Comcast now handles the most native IPv6 traffic on a daily basis. In ISOC's most recent measurements, it rated Comcast's IPv6 deployment at about 16.4%, up from less than 2% on World IPv6 Launch Day in June 2012.

Brzozowski credited much of the gains to Comcast's rollout of IPv6 support to two widely used Arris Group Inc. (Nasdaq: ARRS) wireless gateways modems. With the support for these two modem models -- known as the TG852G and TG862G -- he said the MSO expanded the reach of its IPv6 coverage to more than 4 million broadband customers.

In addition, Brzozowski said Comcast "has been working closely" with Cisco Systems Inc. (Nasdaq: CSCO) to offer network IPv6 support through the vendor's uBR10000 cable modem termination system (CMTS). The MSO has already wrapped up a similar network rollout with CMTS devices from Arris, the cable industry's other main vendor in the CMTS market.

Yet Brzozowski is not exactly resting on his laurels. With IPv6 traffic on Comcast's network still relatively low, he's looking to boost the traffic numbers significantly next year, in part by working with the consumer electronics industry to build IPv6 support into more connected TVs and other new smart CE devices in the home.

Besides Comcast, two other large MSOs made ISOC's latest top 10 list for IPv6 deployment. Time Warner Cable Inc. (NYSE: TWC) came in eighth place globally with a 3.4% IPv6 network score, while Liberty Global Inc. (Nasdaq: LBTY) captured 10th place with a 2.2% IPv6 score.

— Alan Breznick, Cable/Video Practice Leader, Light Reading