Is IPv6 the Next Step?

Could Ipv6 be the answer we all have been hoping for? With exponential growth of the internet IP addresses have become scarce. However, IPv6 will provide every device in the world connected to the Internet with its own unique IP address with plenty of addresses to spare. IPv6 resolves the IP address shortage by using additional octets to create IP addresses. For example, IPv4 addresses are displayed as 192.168.10.1. On the other hand, IPv6 IP addresses are displayed as 2001:0db8:85a3:0000:0000:8a2e:0370:7334. Companies like Comcast, YouTube, Sprint, and Mozilla are currently supporting the next generation internet protocol, which could mean the IPv6 conversion could come quicker than planned.

Back in 1981 when IPv4 was created the design supported the number of IP addresses needed for all the devices attached to the internet. Although, as technology advanced more devices needed to be attached such as servers, PCs, phones, tablets, automobiles, TV's, video game consoles, and home broadband network routers. As a result, The Engineering Task Force (IETF) designed IPv6 with more capabilities then IPv4. For example, multicasting that sends datagrams to groups of receivers in a single transmission. In other words, the source machine sends a packet out only once even though it's going to multiple receivers. This process conserves bandwidth and reduces network congestion. Another feature of IPv6 is Stateless Address Autoconfiguration (SLAAC). SLAAC operates like plug and play; therefore, when a new device is turned on it will automatically configure its own IPv6 address avoiding manual configuring and eliminating private addresses that are not directly accessible through the internet.

There are some major differences in IPv4 over IPv6. First, IPv4 can only support 4.3 billion IP addresses. On the other hand, IPv6 128- bit addresses can support 340,282,366,920,938,463,463,374,607,431,768,211,456 IP addresses. Finally, IPv4 addresses are in dotted decimal notation while IPv6 addresses are in hexadecimal.