IPv6: Why American Visitors Might Not Be Able to Reach Your Website

If you serve customers in the United States, there is a growing problem you might not know about. Major US mobile carriers including T-Mobile and Verizon have moved millions of customers to IPv6-only connections. If your website only supports IPv4, these visitors may experience slower connections or even fail to reach your site.

What is IPv6?

Every device on the internet needs an address. IPv4 is the old system with addresses like 192.168.1.1. IPv6 is the new system with much longer addresses. They were introduced because the world ran out of IPv4 addresses.

Why it matters for your business

Around 40-45% of US internet traffic now uses IPv6. When someone on an IPv6-only connection visits your IPv4-only site, their device has to translate the address first. This adds latency and can occasionally fail entirely.

How to check and fix it

LaunchKitty checks for IPv6 support by looking for AAAA DNS records on your domain. If your site does not support IPv6, we flag it with region-appropriate urgency: medium for US-facing sites, low for UK-only sites. Most hosting providers offer IPv6 at no extra cost. It just needs to be enabled.