IPv6 - Basic Introduction

Hi , As we all know IPv6 is on its way to enter in our life. Why I am saying life ..?

Since in one year it is planned to implement in India and hopefully I know its same situation everywhere.


India's Internet Gateway and all Service provider is all equipped and ready with IPv6 Internet services. 

As right now we are using so many devices, Which are taking us on Internet like Mobile, Laptop, PC, Pads,etc. But we don't have enough IP addresses for usage. 

Right now major IPV4 addresses are allocated to U.S.  So as we need addresses, we don't have any other option than IPv6.

First a brief , Why we want IPv6 address ?

Right now we are facing severe shortage of public IP address, every device wants a public IP address to go on internet. Till now we are using NAT to survive or we can say to extend life of IPv4.  Otherwise IPv4 was suppose to expire years before.

Current Network Limitation with IPv4 Addresses - 

• Shortage of Public IP addresses.
• Mobility is limited.
• New devices are lacking with IP address.
•  Management issues.
• IPv4 lacks scalability due to 4.4bn addresses. Major address pools are allocated to US.

Everybody is looking positively for IPv6 deployments. Since it’s our future …

Let’s see some Goals and Benefits of IPv6.

Goals -

•  Every Network device should have Public IP address to use Internet.
•  As we have public network, we can have IPSec and secure communication across Networks.
• Mobility – In IPv6 we have tons of address, That means every Mobile devices will have Public address for communications.
• IPv6 major target is to eliminate NAT.

Benefits –

• IPv6 comprises of 128 bit address as compared to IPv4 32 bit address space.
• It is having 3.4 x 10³⁸ address, which is more than enough.
• IPv6 is having very simpler header as compared to IPv4 header. If you compare size of header, its more than IPV4. But right now bandwidth is not issue or our concerns.
• IPv6 has less fields in header, It will help to improve Router CPU performance as compared to IPv4 complex header. Which is CPU intense. 
• As IPv6 header is simple, with less fields. So, Its very secure as compared to IPv4. 
• In IPv6 apart from basic header, we have extension headers. Which will be used as per requirements.  For example a mobile node adds mobility related extension headers to its outgoing traffic.
• IPv6 don’t have broadcast. Now in IPv6 everything will majorly work on Multicast.
• ARP has been replaced with ICMP ND (Network discovery).
• IPv6 will improve routing – Aggregated Routing entries are created to reduce Routing table sizes.

I just started making study notes on IPv6, So In upcoming post I will share more about IPv6.

Hope this post is informative for you.

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