IPv6: What is IPv6 and what should you know
IPv6 has been under work for the past 20 years to overcome the shortfall of the IP addresses that are available under IPv4. It has various security advantages, as well as is quite efficient. In this article, we will explain IPv6: What is IPv6 and what should you know
- What is IPv6?
IPv6 is the new version of the Internet Protocol. It recognizes the devices across the internet so that they can be located. All the devices connected to the internet are identified by their unique IP address. The previous version of Internet Protocol was IPv4, it used a 32-bite addressing scheme that supported 4.3 billion devices. Since the evolution of the digital world and the internet, the numbers of computers, mobiles, and devices are increasing gradually, so there is a need for a new protocol to get more addresses.
In 1998 the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) introduced IPv6, which instead used 128-bit addressing to support approximately 340 trillion. The difference between IPv6 vs. IPv4 is that IPv6 uses the eight groups of four hexadecimal digits, that are separated by colons.
- IPv6: The next generation
IPv6 is known as the next generation, because of its ability to expand and grow with users over the world. IPv4 supports a maximum of 4.3 billion unique IP addresses, so why did we need the IPV6? With the growth in mobile devices, computers, tablets, and more. The number of IP addresses became more than what the IPv4 can handle, so we needed something new for the next generation, which is IPV6.
IPV6 supports 340,282,366,920,938,463,463,374,607,431,768,211,456.
- Benefits of IPv6
The Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) added improvements to the IPv6 as compared to IPv4.
- Can handle packets effectively and efficiently.
- Has improved performance.
- Has increased security.
- Can reduce the size of the routing tables.
- Does IPv6 solve IPv4 problems?
This protocol uses 128-bit addresses compared to 32-bit that were used by IPv4, which means more available addresses. That means the address won’t run out in the next 480 years at least!
But that doesn’t mean to move from IPv4 to IPv6. IPv4 addresses are supposed to work as they do now, and they will co-exist with IPV6 networks.
- Should you move to IPv6?
Some big organizations have a targeted day to move to IPv6, but that doesn’t mean you have to move yours now.
What about security? Some people say that IPv6 is more secure, and that might be because of focusing on different aspects of network deployment. IPv6 supports improved security because IP security was developed for it specifically.
However, IPsec can also be used with IPv4. Now is 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.
It’s important to know that both IPv4 and IPv6 will work in parallel until there’s no longer any need to do so.
Websiteroof offers IPv6 address support.
Conclusion
As soon as the advancements will be made on the internet, and more devices will join the internet, then we will be using IPv6. This protocol has immense importance, due to its large bit addressing schemes and enhanced security features.
