In a terrific video presentation posted from the company's @Scale Conference earlier this month, Facebook software engineer Paul Saab revealed that IPv6 now accounts for almost 50% of Facebook's 4G smartphone traffic in the US and predicted it will come to dominate IPv4 as major networking and Internet companies continue to push the technology.

Saab said extensive testing and analysis showed that IPv6 is 15% faster than v4 for Facebook users and highlighted removal of NAT (network address translation) devices from the forwarding path as the most significant reason for this.

Operator executives agreed that IPv6 is gaining currency rapidly and that NATs are problematic. "We still have too much NAT around; once you're IPv6-only that headache is gone… IPv6 gives you scale and simplicity," said Deutsche Telekom's Axel Clauberg.

Verizon Wireless has been able to validate the 15% faster performance gain. Verizon's director of device technology, Samir Vaidya, said its customers gain the same sort of benefit from IPv6 as Facebook's. "Getting through NATs is problematic," said Vaidya.

Some of the other highlights from the video include:

Perhaps unsurprisingly, one place where IPv6 hasn't yet caught on is the corporate market, and that's a problem, says Saab. One of the reasons corporates are resistant is security, he said, because many users are concerned that their NAT is also their firewall! This is obviously solvable. (Side note: if ever there was a case for "decomposed" VNFs, here it is!)

After years of preparation, and a lot of hard work, it's great to see IPv6 start to pay-off. If you're even vaguely thinking about IPv6, I recommend you view the video, which you can see below:

— Gabriel Brown, Senior Analyst, Heavy Reading