Ipv6 what is new

IPv6 is a well established protocol that is seeing growing usage and deployment, particularly in mobile phone markets. The core specification for the IPv6 protocol was first published in as RFC , and has seen a number of enhancements and updates since then. It formally became a full standard as opposed to a draft standard in with the publication of RFC , although IPv6 had already been deployed for many years. Version 5 of the IP family was an experimental protocol developed in the s.

IPv5 also called the Internet Stream Protocol was never widely deployed, and 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, the one with version number 6 was selected. IPv6 uses bit addresses as opposed to the bit addresses used by IPv4, allowing for a substantially larger number of possible addresses.

In practice, the actual number of usable addresses is slightly less as IPv6 addresses are structured for routing and other purposes, whilst certain ranges are reserved for special use. The number of IPv6 addresses available, though, is still extremely large. Existing devices and networks connected to the Internet using IPv4 addresses should continue to work as they do now.

In fact, IPv4-based networks are expected to co-exist with IPv6-based networks at the same time. However, for network operators and other entities that rely on Internet address assignments, it will become increasingly difficult and expensive and eventually prohibitively so to obtain new IPv4 address space to grow their networks. The cost and complexity associated with keeping track of and managing remaining IPv4 address space efficiently will also increase, so network operators and enterprises will need to implement IPv6 in order to ensure long-term network growth and global connectivity.

There are various translation mechanisms available to allow hosts that support only IPv4 or IPv6 to communicate with each other. NAT64 uses a gateway that routes traffic from an IPv6 network to an IPv4 one, and performs the necessary translations for transferring packets between the two networks.

Many well-known enterprises are already deploying IPv6-only services and networks, which reduces the network management burden as there is no longer any IPv4 on the network. The need to translate from an IPv6-only environment to IPv4-only hosts on the Internet will reduce as IPv6 is more widely deployed around the world.

Of course, it will still be possible to use existing IPv4 addresses for the foreseeable future, even though their usage is expected to decline as devices and services increasingly support IPv6. The last IPv4 address blocks have already been allocated to the Regional Internet Registries RIRs and have either been depleted or are very close to depletion. Some legacy address blocks may be recovered and reallocated, and some previously assigned address blocks will be traded by their holders, but it will no longer be possible to get new address blocks to meet the future growth of the Internet.

An up-to-date report on IPv6 assignment is available here. The key difference between the versions of the protocol is that IPv6 has significantly more address space. Users should not be aware of any difference. The addresses do look different though. The IPv6 address notation is eight groups of four hexadecimal digits with the groups separated by colons, for example dbfdeae8, although there are methods to abbreviate this notation.

For comparison, the IPv4 notation is four groups of decimal digits with the groups separated by dots, for example The expanded addressing capacity of IPv6 will enable the trillions of new Internet addresses needed to support connectivity for a huge range of new devices such as phones, household appliances and vehicles.

Debates concerning IPv4 versus IPv6 security often focus on different aspects of network deployment. It has been said that IPv6 supports improved security because the IP Security IPsec was originally developed for IPv6 and it implementation was intended to be a mandatory part of the protocol. However, IPsec can also be used with IPv4, and is now simply recommended for use with IPv6 because it was considered impractical to require full IPsec implementations for all types of devices that may use IPv6.

As a result, it has been expected that IPv6 would increase host exposure. Deploy provides hands on, technical deployment information to network operators responsible for implementing new technologies and standards on their own networks. See the Featured Resources box above for a quick start. Here at the Internet Society, we believe that the Internet is for everyone. Our work centers on increasing the How did it get started?

What are the project However, it does have one significant difference: it utilizes a bit IP address. IPv4 uses a bit address for its Internet addresses. That may seem like a lot, but all 4. IPv6 utilizes bit Internet addresses. The number of IPv6 addresses is times larger than the number of IPv4 addresses. So there are more than enough IPv6 addresses to allow for Internet devices to expand for a very long time.

The text form of the IPv6 address is xxxx:xxxx:xxxx:xxxx:xxxx:xxxx:xxxx:xxxx, where each x is a hexadecimal digit, representing 4 bits. Leading zeros can be omitted. It was successful at that task, and was used experimentally. One shortcoming that undermined its popular use was its bit address scheme — the same scheme used by IPv4.

As a result, it had the same problem that IPv4 had — a limited number of possible IP addresses. That led to the development and eventual adoption of IPv6. Even though IPv5 was never adopted publicly, it had used up the name IPv5.

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