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Why is IPv6 better?

About IPv4

Millions of computers and network endpoints (like printers, cameras, mobile sets, etc.) connected via the Internet rely on a unified language or system for their communication, called Internet Protocol, or IP for short. These network endpoints (computers, printers, cameras, mobile sets, etc.) are identified using a so called IP address, which currently is in its fourth generation, hence the name: IPv4.

An IPv4 address may look something like this: 84.2.36.220

In this format every single part represents 8 bits, and every bit can have two values (0 and 1), therefore one part can have 28 values. Consequently, this type of numbering represents 232  possible different IPv4 addresses.

Initially, this addressing method was excellent, however, due to the unforeseen expansion of the web , networking experts experienced more and more problems. One such problem is that the amount of potentially allocated addresses is insufficient. Every second a new, 4th generation IP address is allocated, and according to preliminary estimates, we may run out of available addresses within 2 years. Several address counters are posted on the internet: http://www.inetcore.com/project/ipv4ec/index_en.html, http://ipv6.he.net/statistics/.

Another problem is that this protocol does not support mobility, and it is not possible to support encryption built into the protocol.

To solve these issues, IPv6 was developed. However, the introduction of IPv6 is rendered more difficult by the fact that it is not backward compatible with IPv4.

IPv6, the network protocol of the future

IPv6 (Internet Protocol version 6) is the next version of IPv4. Contrary to the 32 bit IPv4 addressing, IPv6 uses 128 bits for addressing, which theoretically allows allocation of 2128 addresses. Thereby IPv6 offers a long term solution for most of the problems encountered by using IPv4 addresses.

An IPv6 address may look something like this: 2001:4C48:100:162:8C40:CCB:1FC0:1723

The 128 bit IPv6 address is usually constructed of 8 hexadecimal numbers/parts with maximum 4 digits, separated by colons, where each part represents 16 bits.

This way every single device connected to the network can have a public, globally individual and internet routable IPv6 address, which makes Network Address Translation (NAT) service used by firewalls and routers in today’s IPv4 networks unnecessary. NAT service is a mandatory service in today’s network in order to ensure economical address management (e.g. the Internet connected component of a customer sub-network, such as a router, is only allocated with a single public IPv4 IP address, which can be used as a common Internet visible address for all sub-network endpoints.

Advantages of IPv6 compared to IPv4

IPv6 in addition to offering a significantly larger address space, has many other advantages over IPv4:

  • The IPv6 protocol has built in support for multicast 1  transmission, while with IPv4 this feature is optional.
  • IPv6 devices allocate also an only locally accessible and valid IPv6 address for a client connected, which allows communication between endpoints on the same sub-network regardless of the presence of a router.2
  • As for security features, the IPsec support (authentication and encryption) is a mandatory component of the IPv6 protocol, while in case of IPv4 this feature is optional.
  • Contrary to the Mobile IPv4 protocol, the Mobile IPv6 (MIPv6) helps avoid triangular routing experienced earlier, and makes it possible for mobile (WiFi) clients to select a new router without renumbering, which results in a more reliable and faster connection with less network interruption.
  • In case of IPv4, data packages have an upper size limit of 64 kB (kilobytes), while with IPv6 this may be extended up to 4GB (gigabytes), significantly increasing the transmission rate.

Further detailed information on IPv6 is available at the following sites:

Application and services operating on IPv6

Software development companies around the world are preparing their network applications for using the new protocol. Several applications are already available for using the new addressing system:

  • VideoLAN
  • Azureus
  • µTorrent
  • Windows Media Player

The list of the most popular applications upgraded to support IPv6 (in English) is available at the following webpage: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_IPv6_application_support  

Google and IPv6 (Google over IPv6)

The leading web search application developer of the world, Google, also intends to make sure that all of their services can be accessed via the IPv6 protocol. Currently the IPv6 protocol is supported by the Google search engine itself (picture, blog and code search), Google Alerts, Google Docs, Google Finance, Gmail, Google Health, iGoogle, Google News, Google Reader, Picasa and Google Maps services.

Further information about Google working on IPv6 is available at the http://www.google.com/intl/en/ipv6/ webpage.

Additionally, an IPv6 Google search add-on has also been developed for the Mozilla Firefox browser, whose operation, similarly to other IPv6 applications, requires an IPv6 connection. (https://addons.mozilla.org/hu/firefox/addon/11730)

1 Multicast is a mode of communication which, unlike the traditional method (unicast), ensures connection not between two computers, rather, among members of a group consisting of an arbitrary number of computers. In such cases data do not have to be sent separately towards each computer, but it is enough to send them to the group address, which results in a significant bandwidth requirement reduction compared to the unicast solution.

2 Additionally, IPv6 supports DHCPv6 and Stateless Address Autoconfiguration (SLAAC) of network addresses. With the help of the latter, the IPv6 clients can generate and configure globally accessible and individual addresses for themselves, after being connected to an IPv6 network and router.


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