Is it really that popular nowadays? How many folks still use a tunnel broker at all in 2026?
I don't have statistics on that, but I can say that Verizon FIOS NG-PON2 service in the US (which is what I have) does not offer native V6, so yes, sadly I am forced to use a tunnel broker in 2026.
At home, my ISP gives me native IPv6. At work, we don't have IPv6 (or it's just disabled on the router), so I sometimes use one to test stuff (I use 6Project).
Tons.
A lot of US ISPs have no ipv6 configured.
(There are roughly 3,000 different ISPs in the US.)
I've been thinking about starting. My current ISP (Comcast) has native IPv6 but you can't get a static prefix (maybe if you are a business class customer, IDK). It would be nice to have a prefix which is statically assigned to me for stuff that I host at home, so I've looked at doing an HE tunnel instead. The main drawback seems to be that some networks still refuse to peer with them so not everything is reachable.