Networking

What is IPv6?

IPv6 is the new version of the Internet address protocol that has been developed to supplement (and eventually replace) IPv4, the version that underpins the Internet today.

The Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF), an international group concerned with developing technical standards that make the Internet work better first published the basic IPv6 protocol in 1998. It has since seen a number of enhancements, such as the addition of mobile IPv6 specifications (in 2004).

Version 5 of the IP family was an experimental protocol developed in the 1980s. IPv5 (also called the Internet Stream Protocol) was never widely deployed. Since the number 5 was already allocated, this number was not considered for the successor to IPv4. Several proposals were suggested as the IPv4 successor, and each was assigned a number. In the end, it happened that the one with version number 6 was selected.

Simply by having a lot more address space to uniquely identify devices that are connected to the Internet. IPv4 has a theoretical maximum of about 4 billion addresses whereas IPv6 has an unthinkable theoretical maximum: about 340 trillion, trillion, trillion addresses. In actual use, IPv6 addresses are structured for routing and other purposes and as a result the number of addresses available is effectively less, but still extremely large.

For the end user, the large amount of IPv6 address space means:

Home users will generally be given blocks of addresses sufficient to number multiple networks and thousands of devices. (In contrast, under IPv4, home users today typically get a single address.)

Enterprises and small businesses will generally be given enough to number a substantial number of networks and tens of thousands of devices; while larger sites will get significantly more.

Existing devices and networks connected to the Internet through IPv4 addresses will continue to work as they do now. In fact, IPv4-based networks are expected to co-exist with...