Sunday update --- the small rising trend of the last 6 weeks seems to be continuing:
Despite the eye suggesting a fortnight ago that the rise in IPv6 counts had peaked, that proved to be just a local maximum in the growth curve, and since then the 2,099 seen on 2018-09-12 rose to a new peak of 2,166 on 2018-09-24 before dropping off a little again.
These numbers are just too small to carry much significance, I think. Others in the thread have observed that Virgin Media tends to run a month of customer trials before making a new feature public, but if so then this doesn't match what we're currently seeing, if indeed the last 6 weeks indicate a customer trial in progress. Perhaps that's not what's really happening at all. Inferring otherwise from such small numbers might be just wishful thinking.
Morgaine.
Sunday update --- something new is happening!
After the small rise seen in August reached an uneven plateau during the last fortnight of September, now in October the IPv6 growth rate has really shot up! In fact it's nearly in the same ballpark as the rate of IPv6 growth during August-September 2017, the first time that Virgin Media showed IPv6 activity higher than lab testing background noise rates.
Although this is a very good sign, note that a similar rate of increase to that in Q3 2017 probably means that it won't go higher than in 2017 either, because it probably involves the same bunch of testers, namely it's an internal trial. If this were an open public rollout, even in just one small region, the rate of increase would be much steeper.
The current growth rate is in the range of 100-150 extra per day, today reaching 3,176:
DATE AS Users IPv6-Users %UKv6
========== == ========== ========== =====
2018_10_07: VIRGIN 11,778,231 2,388 0.02
2018_10_08: VIRGIN 11,772,521 2,504 0.02
2018_10_09: VIRGIN 11,759,015 2,551 0.02
2018_10_10: VIRGIN 11,741,738 2,681 0.02
2018_10_11: VIRGIN 11,723,514 2,835 0.02
2018_10_12: VIRGIN 11,714,250 2,947 0.02
2018_10_13: VIRGIN 11,687,497 3,069 0.02
2018_10_14: VIRGIN 11,671,210 3,176 0.02
The next fortnight will be very interesting, and if the growth continues then it could reach 10,000 in November or so.
Morgaine.
Sunday update --- The fast rise we noted a fortnight ago continues, at a very uniform pace.
This remarkably steady rate of growth is reminiscent of the straight line that we saw throughout February and March. We attributed that linearity to rollout of network equipment, because trialist populations rarely increase linearly whereas a small team of engineers deploying equipment across the country would produce near-constant growth. There are no regular dips in the curve coinciding with weekends so it would appear that they're working non-stop, perhaps suggesting that it's a high-priority project, if this guess is correct. We'll probably never know of course, but it seems possible in the absence of a better hypothesis.
Today's count stands at 5,391 per day.
Morgaine.
