Let’s Encrypt launched April 12, 2016 with the intent to support and encourage sites to enable HTTPS everywhere (sometimes referred to as SSL everywhere even though the web is steadily moving toward TLS as the preferred protocol). As of the end of February 2017, EFF estimates that half the web is now encrypted. Now certainly not all of that is attributable to EFF and Let’s Encrypt. After all, I have data from well before that date that indicates a majority of F5 customers enabled HTTPS on client-facing services, in the 70% range. So clearly folks were supporting HTTPS before Let’s Encrypt launched its efforts, but given the significant number of certificates* it has issued the effort is not without measurable success.
On Sept 11, 2006, ICANN “ratified a global policy for the allocation of IPv6 addresses by the Internet Assigned Numbers Authority (IANA)”. While the standard itself was ratified many years (like a decade) before, without a policy governing the allocation of those addresses it really wasn’t all that significant. But as of 2006 we were serious about moving toward IPv6. After all, the web was growing, mobile was exploding, and available IPv4 addresses were dwindling to nothing.
Read more at F5
