[rkeene2]

You can thank large backbone providers for this. IPv6 works just fine over the same L2 link as IPv4, so there would never need to be any more hops than IPv4 (sometimes they do need to upgrade equipment to support IPv6 so they may be DIFFERENT hops over DIFFERENT L2 links, but they could also move their IPv4 traffic to that new equipment).

What happens is when the large backbone providers have disputes, the de-peer with each other IPv6, which causes rerouting to be visible. They can't "punish" the other with IPv4 depeering, since that would make their own customers angry.