Apple’s next devices may prefer IPv6 connections

Expect Apple's next computers and mobile devices to embrace IPv6, the latest Internet protocol.

The betas of Apple's latest OS X and iOS operating systems will now prefer IPv6 connections over the previous IPv4, Apple engineer David Schinazi said.

"While our previous implementation from four years ago was designed to select the connection with lowest latency no matter what, we agree that the Internet has changed since then and reports indicate that biasing towards IPv6 is now beneficial for our customers: IPv6 is now mainstream instead of being an exception, there are less broken IPv6 tunnels, IPv4 carrier-grade NATs are increasing in numbers, and throughput may even be better on average over IPv6," he said in a message to the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF).

He said the seeds of iOS 9 and OS X El Capitan include an improved version of Happy Eyeballs, which use 99 percent IPv6 connections.

The iOS 8 and OS X Yosemite operating systems use a 50-50 share between IPv6 and IPv4.

Schinazi said that if the devices work well on IPv6 during testing, there would be more IPv6 traffic from Apple products.

"If this behavior proves successful during the beta period, you should expect more IPv6 traffic from Apple products in the future," he said.

A separate report on The Next Web said IPv6 was not quite supported before because many IPv6 endpoints were misconfigured and slow to respond.

But this has changed, Schinazi said. “IPv6 is now mainstream instead of being an exception.” — Joel Locsin/BM, GMA News