State of SRv6 2026¶

A data report on Segment Routing over IPv6: standards, work in progress, public deployments and vendor support. Data as of 20 October 2026. Every number links to its source, and the scripts that produce the IETF figures and charts are in the repository.

Key findings¶

1. 23 RFCs are explicitly about SRv6, from RFC 8754 (the SRH, March 2020) to RFC 10038 (SRv6 locators over DHCPv6, August 2026). Details
2. 2023 and 2025 were the busiest years, with 7 SRv6 RFCs each. Three more have been published in 2026 so far. Details
3. 65 active Internet-Drafts in seven IETF working groups mention SRv6: 25 adopted by a working group and 40 individual submissions. Details
4. SPRING carries 28 of them, and srv6ops, the working group for SRv6 operations, has 13. Details
5. 18 organizations have documented SRv6 in their own networks in public: 9 telecom operators, 8 cloud and AI companies and 1 government agency. Details
6. SRv6 moved into AI training networks. OpenAI, Microsoft and Oracle use static SRv6 source routing inside GPU fabrics, and Meta and Alibaba Cloud use SRv6 traffic engineering between AI sites. Details
7. uSID is the mainstream encoding: 8 of the 11 implementations in the support matrix support NEXT-C-SID (uSID), and 2 more support it partially. Details

Standards: 23 RFCs¶

The count includes every RFC whose title or abstract names SRv6, "Segment Routing over IPv6", "IPv6 Segment Routing" or the Segment Routing Header. It leaves out general Segment Routing RFCs that SRv6 also uses but whose abstract does not mention it, such as RFC 8402 (SR architecture), RFC 9256 (SR Policy), RFC 9830 (SR Policy in BGP) and RFC 9855 (TI-LFA). The RFCs section of this site explains those too.

The work moved from the data plane to everything around it. The first RFCs (2020–2021) defined the header and the behaviors. 2023 brought the routing protocols (IS-IS, OSPFv3, BGP-LS) and telemetry. 2025 brought uSID compression (RFC 9800), service signaling and controller extensions. In 2026 so far: alternate-marking measurement on the SRH (RFC 9947), point-to-multipoint policies (RFC 9960) and locator assignment over DHCPv6 (RFC 10038).

Eighteen of the 23 are Proposed Standards, three are Informational and two Experimental. They came from eleven working groups, plus one RFC published outside a working group. 6man, spring, lsr, idr and bess produced three each.

All 23, with dates and status from the RFC Editor:

Work in progress: 65 active drafts¶

On 20 October 2026 the IETF Datatracker listed 65 active Internet-Drafts that mention SRv6 in their title or abstract within the seven working groups most involved: spring, srv6ops, idr, lsr, 6man, bess and pce. A working-group draft (draft-ietf-<wg>-…) has been adopted by the group. An individual draft (draft-<author>-<wg>-…) is a proposal aimed at that group that has not been adopted.

Two patterns stand out. SPRING, the group that owns the SRv6 architecture, still has the most drafts (28). And srv6ops, chartered for operations and deployment, has the highest ratio of proposals to adopted work: 10 individual drafts against 3 adopted. Several of those proposals cover AI networks, service function chaining and protection.

The 25 working-group drafts, furthest along first:

Deployments: 18 organizations¶

This is a count of organizations, not announcements, with a public account of SRv6 in their own network: a press release, an engineering blog, a conference talk by the operator, or an IETF document. Trials and vendor product listings are not counted. It is a lower bound. Many deployments, especially in China, are not announced in English, and the IETF's own deployment-status draft stopped being updated in 2022.

Cloud and AI companies (8) now nearly match telecom operators (9), and seven of the eight describe SRv6 in AI infrastructure. The operator list is in Real-World Deployments and the AI list in SRv6 for AI.

Implementations: 11 tracked¶

The SRv6 support matrix records, with a source for every cell, which capabilities each implementation documents: Cisco IOS-XR and IOS-XE, Juniper Junos, Arista EOS, Nokia SR OS, Huawei VRP, FRRouting, the Linux kernel, SONiC, FD.io VPP and open-source Cilium. The chart counts how many document each capability. A capability with no public source counts as not supported, so the bars are a floor.

The base data plane and uSID are close to universal: only open-source Cilium lacks uSID, and Huawei VRP and SONiC support it partially (in VRP's default 16-bit mode, compression is not the RFC 9800 form). The gaps are higher up the stack. Mobile user plane (RFC 9433) and SRv6 multicast have the least documented support, and none of the open-source stacks documents SRv6 TI-LFA or EVPN over SRv6.

Milestones of 2026¶

What to watch in 2027¶

These are the documents closest to publication or adoption on 20 October 2026, according to the Datatracker. The IETF does not commit to dates, so read them as signals rather than forecasts.

• Next RFCs. Two working-group drafts are in the RFC Editor queue: draft-ietf-6man-sidlist-clarification, which clarifies how nodes process the SRv6 SID list, and draft-ietf-spring-resource-aware-segments. draft-ietf-idr-ts-flowspec-srv6-policy (steering with BGP FlowSpec into SR Policies) is in IETF Last Call.
• SRv6 security. draft-ietf-spring-srv6-security, the threat analysis of the SRv6 data plane, is in IESG evaluation at revision -19. See Security.
• Operational guidance. srv6ops has three adopted drafts on deployment options, addressing recommendations and a summary of operational problems.
• AI networks. draft-filsfils-srv6ops-srv6-ai-backend asked for adoption at IETF 126. Other individual drafts cover SRv6 TE for AI networks and adaptive load balancing for AI data center interconnect. See the standards tracker.
• YANG models. Base SRv6, IS-IS SRv6, OSPF SRv6 and PCEP SRv6 YANG models are all adopted, so vendor-neutral automation of SRv6 is getting closer.
• MPLS coexistence. draft-ietf-spring-srv6-mpls-interworking, plus individual drafts on BGP transport interworking and dual MPLS/SRv6 service advertisement, address the long migration most operators face. See Migration.
• Open source. The Linux RFC 9433 mobile user plane series is still under review, and SONiC's SRv6 control plane remains static configuration. Either changing would widen the open-source column of the support matrix.

Methodology¶

• RFCs. The IETF Datatracker API was queried for RFCs whose title or abstract contains "SRv6", "Segment Routing over IPv6", "Segment Routing over the IPv6", "IPv6 Segment Routing" or "Segment Routing Header". Publication dates and status come from the RFC Editor's metadata for each RFC. The rule is mechanical: it includes RFCs that cover SRv6 as one of several data planes (for example RFC 9350, Flex-Algo) and leaves out SR RFCs that do not name SRv6 in the abstract.
• Drafts. Same text rule, applied to drafts in the Datatracker state "Active" in seven working groups. Working-group drafts are those named draft-ietf-<wg>-…. Individual drafts are those named draft-<author>-<wg>-…. Drafts aimed at other groups, such as ippm or opsawg, are not counted. Stages come from the Datatracker states.
• Deployments. Organizations listed in Real-World Deployments and SRv6 for AI whose source is the organization itself, a talk by it, or an IETF document naming it. Trials and vendor product listings are not counted. Region is the organization's headquarters.
• Implementations. Counts come from the support matrix data file, verified 20 October 2026. "Partial" is the matrix's own rating. Unknown cells count as not supported.
• Reproduce it. python tools/state-of-srv6/fetch_ietf.py refreshes the IETF snapshot and python tools/state-of-srv6/build.py --og redraws the charts and the share image. The data files are in the repository.

Corrections are welcome as a GitHub issue or pull request.

How to cite this report¶

Navas, D. (2026). State of SRv6 2026. SRv6.md. https://srv6.md/reports/state-of-srv6-2026/ (data as of 20 October 2026).

@misc{srv6md2026state,
  author       = {Navas, Daniel},
  title        = {State of {SRv6} 2026},
  year         = {2026},
  howpublished = {SRv6.md},
  url          = {https://srv6.md/reports/state-of-srv6-2026/},
  note         = {Data as of 20 October 2026}
}

Reusing the charts and data. SRv6.md is published under the MIT License. You may copy the charts, tables and numbers into articles, slides and posts, including commercial ones. Please credit "SRv6.md, State of SRv6 2026" with a link to this page. The share image is at /assets/images/state-of-srv6-2026.png.

Frequently Asked Questions¶

How many SRv6 RFCs are there?¶

As of 20 October 2026, 23 RFCs name SRv6 in their title or abstract. The first was RFC 8754 (the Segment Routing Header, March 2020) and the latest is RFC 10038 (August 2026). Several general Segment Routing RFCs, such as RFC 8402 and RFC 9256, also apply to SRv6 but are not in that count.

Who uses SRv6 in production?¶

Publicly documented users include telecom operators such as China Mobile, SoftBank, Rakuten Mobile, Reliance Jio, Swisscom, Bell Canada and Telefonica VIVO, and cloud and AI companies such as Microsoft, OpenAI, Oracle, Meta, Alibaba Cloud and Nebius. This report counts 18 organizations.

Which vendors support SRv6 uSID?¶

Cisco IOS-XR and IOS-XE, Juniper Junos, Arista EOS, Nokia SR OS, FRRouting, the Linux kernel and FD.io VPP document uSID (NEXT-C-SID) support. Huawei VRP and SONiC support it partially. See the support matrix for releases and sources.