The IPv6 decade in .com

In Oct 2013, 1.9% of .com domains used a nameserver with an IPv6 address listed in the .com zone. In Nov 2026, 63.6% did.

Oct 2013

1.9% of 110.9M domains

Nov 2026

63.6% of 168.6M domains

Nameserver hosts with IPv6 glue, today

30,048 of 1,166,737

Share of .com domains with at least one nameserver that has IPv6 glue

What it measures

When a domain's nameservers live inside .com (like ns1.example.com), the .com zone itself lists their addresses, called glue. We counted, in every full .com zone file we have, how many of those nameserver names have an IPv6 (AAAA) glue record, and how many domains use at least one of them.

Nameserver hosts grew slowly; domains jumped. The share of in-zone nameserver hosts with IPv6 went from 0.3% to 2.6%. The share of domains went from 1.9% to 63.6%, and roughly 49% of that rise falls between Apr 2016 and Apr 2018 (we have nothing from 2017, so we can't say when within those two years). Counts alone can't say why. Large DNS providers adding IPv6 to nameservers they already ran would look like this, and so would many domains moving to providers that already had it. We haven't traced which.
It counts publication, not working DNS. We read addresses listed in the zone file. We didn't test whether those nameservers answer over IPv6, so a listed address may point at a server that doesn't respond.
It's a floor for publication. Nameservers outside .com (say ns1.example.net) have no glue in the .com zone, so their domains count as "no" here even when those nameservers publish IPv6 elsewhere.
It's DNS, not websites. It says nothing about whether a domain's website has IPv6.
The gap is real. We hold zone files from 2013 to April 2018, and daily from July 2026. Nothing in between, and nothing from 2017 either, so every dashed line is just a join, not data.

Every measurement

Zone date	Zone	Domains	Domains with an IPv6 nameserver	Nameserver hosts with IPv6 glue
2013-10-18	.com	110.9M	1.9%	5,776 of 1,941,741 (0.3%)
2014-01-15	.com	112.0M	2.0%	6,233 of 1,930,195 (0.3%)
2014-04-15	.com	113.2M	2.2%	6,453 of 1,922,911 (0.3%)
2014-06-05	.com	113.4M	2.4%	6,702 of 1,911,022 (0.4%)
2015-01-24	.com	115.7M	2.7%	8,975 of 1,896,892 (0.5%)
2015-03-27	.com	116.9M	3.2%	9,393 of 1,908,420 (0.5%)
2015-09-23	.com	118.8M	4.0%	10,378 of 1,974,947 (0.5%)
2015-12-15	.com	122.9M	4.2%	10,721 of 1,967,458 (0.5%)
2016-03-15	.com	125.3M	4.4%	11,086 of 1,965,395 (0.6%)
2016-04-02	.com	125.6M	4.4%	11,093 of 1,959,462 (0.6%)
2018-04-03	.com	132.3M	34.9%	15,355 of 1,635,541 (0.9%)
2026-11-04	.com	168.6M	63.6%	30,048 of 1,166,737 (2.6%)
2013-10-18	.net	15.1M	3.3%	4,923 of 406,341 (1.2%)
2014-01-15	.net	15.2M	2.9%	5,231 of 395,875 (1.3%)
2014-04-15	.net	15.2M	2.9%	5,458 of 387,286 (1.4%)
2014-06-05	.net	15.2M	2.9%	5,679 of 387,562 (1.5%)
2015-09-23	.net	14.9M	3.5%	7,319 of 366,808 (2.0%)
2015-12-15	.net	15.6M	3.5%	7,540 of 362,578 (2.1%)
2016-01-15	.net	15.6M	3.5%	7,573 of 359,977 (2.1%)
2016-03-15	.net	15.6M	3.5%	7,786 of 354,050 (2.2%)
2016-04-03	.net	15.7M	3.5%	7,880 of 351,703 (2.2%)
2018-04-03	.net	14.2M	4.9%	11,075 of 300,322 (3.7%)
2026-11-04	.net	12.5M	9.8%	20,882 of 175,420 (11.9%)

Each row is one whole zone file, counted line by line, not sampled. .net is shown for comparison. We left out .org: its zone file lists glue for nameservers outside .org too, so its numbers aren't counted on the same basis. JSON: /api/v1/decade · How we measure · Today's sites: the top 1,000