What is IPv6

Learn about IPv6

Six Benefits Of IPv6

With IPv6, everything from appliances to automobiles can be interconnected. But an increased number of IT addresses isn’t the only advantage of IPv6 over IPv4. In honor of World IPv6 Day, here are six more good reasons to make sure your hardware, software, and services support IPv6.

More Efficient Routing

IPv6 reduces the size of routing tables and makes routing more efficient and hierarchical. IPv6 allows ISPs to aggregate the prefixes of their customers' networks into a single prefix and announce this one prefix to the IPv6 Internet. In addition, in IPv6 networks, fragmentation is handled by the source device, rather than the router, using a protocol for discovery of the path's maximum transmission unit (MTU).

More Efficient Packet Processing

IPv6's simplified packet header makes packet processing more efficient. Compared with IPv4, IPv6 contains no IP-level checksum, so the checksum does not need to be recalculated at every router hop. Getting rid of the IP-level checksum was possible because most link-layer technologies already contain checksum and error-control capabilities. In addition, most transport layers, which handle end-to-end connectivity, have a checksum that enables error detection.

Directed Data Flows

IPv6 supports multicast rather than broadcast. Multicast allows bandwidth-intensive packet flows (like multimedia streams) to be sent to multiple destinations simultaneously, saving network bandwidth. Disinterested hosts no longer must process broadcast packets. In addition, the IPv6 header has a new field, named Flow Label, that can identify packets belonging to the same flow.

Simplified Network Configuration

Address auto-configuration (address assignment) is built in to IPv6. A router will send the prefix of the local link in its router advertisements. A host can generate its own IP address by appending its link-layer (MAC) address, converted into Extended Universal Identifier (EUI) 64-bit format, to the 64 bits of the local link prefix.

Support For New Services

By eliminating Network Address Translation (NAT), true end-to-end connectivity at the IP layer is restored, enabling new and valuable services. Peer-to-peer networks are easier to create and maintain, and services such as VoIP and Quality of Service (QoS) become more robust.

Security

IPSec, which provides confidentiality, authentication and data integrity, is baked into in IPv6. Because of their potential to carry malware, IPv4 ICMP packets are often blocked by corporate firewalls, but ICMPv6, the implementation of the Internet Control Message Protocol for IPv6, may be permitted because IPSec can be applied to the ICMPv6 packets.

Concept

IPv6 is short for “Internet Protocol Version 6”. IPv6 is the Internet’s next-generation protocol, designed to replace the current Internet Protocol, IP Version 4. In order to communicate over the Internet, computers and other devices must have sender and receiver addresses. These numeric addresses are known as Internet Protocol addresses. As the Internet and the number of people using it grows exponentially, so does the need for IP addresses. IPv6 is a standard developed by the Internet Engineering Task Force, an organization that develops Internet technologies. The IETF, anticipating the need for more IP addresses, created IPv6 to accommodate the growing number of users and devices accessing the Internet. IPv6 allows more users and devices to communicate on the Internet by using bigger numbers to create IP addresses. Under IPv4, every IP address is 32 bits long, which allows 4.3 billion unique addresses. An example IPv4 address is: 172.16.254.1 In comparison, IPv6 addresses are 128 bits, which allow for approximately three hundred and forty trillion, trillion unique IP addresses. An example IPv6 address is: 2001:db8:ffff:1:201:02ff:fe03:0405 IPv6 offers other networking advantages. In most cases, computers and applications will detect and take advantage of IPv6-enabled networks and services without requiring any action from the user. IPv6 also relieves other networking issues that can arise due to the limited number of addresses available on IPv4. For example, IPv6 reduces the need for Network Address Translation, a service that allows multiple clients to share a single IP address, but is not always reliable.

To test your IPv6 connectivity, you can visit test-ipv6.com.

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