Basics of IPV6

IPV6

Internet Protocol Version 6

IPv6 was created by the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF), an international group that develops technical standards for the Internet. The core specification for the IPv6 protocol was first published in 1995 as RFC 1883, and has seen a number of enhancements and updates subsequently then. It formally became a full standard in 2017.

An Internet Protocol Version 6 address (IPv6 address) is a numerical address that is used to recognize a network interface of a computer sharing in an IPv6 computer network. IP addresses are included in the packet header to indicate the source and the destination of each packet. 

The IP address of the destination is used to make choices about routing IP packets to other networks. IPv6 is the successor to the first addressing infrastructure of the Internet IPv4. 

IPV4 have the IP address = 32 Bit

IPV6 have the IP address= 128 Bit

Unicast Address: Unicast Address classifies a single network interface. A packet sent to unicast address is delivered to the interface identified by that address.

Multicast Address: Multicast Address is used by multiple hosts, called as Group, obtains a multicast destination address. If any packet is sent to this multicast address, it will be circulated to all interfaces corresponding to that multicast address.

Anycast Address: Anycast Address is allocated to a group. Any packet sent to anycast address will be delivered to only one member interface.

IPV6 Address Format (Unicast)

Bits	48 or more	16 or few	64
Field	Routing Prefix	Subnet ID	Interface identifier

IPV6 Address Format (Multicast)

Multicast addresses of IPv6 use the prefix ff00::/8.

Bits	8	4	4	112
Field	Prefix	Flags	Scope	Group ID

An IPv6 address is denoted as eight groups of four hexadecimal digits, each group representing 16 bits. 

An example of an IPv6 address is:

2008:0db8:85a3:0000:0100:8a2e:0370:7234

IPv6 uses 128-bit addresses over the 32-bit addresses of IPv4, allowing for a substantially larger number of possible addresses. With each bit equivalent to a ‘0’ or ‘1’, this hypothetically allows 2^128 combinations or 340 trillion, trillion, trillion addresses. By contrast, IPv4 permits 2^32 combinations for a maximum of approximately 4.7 billion addresses.

The key difference between IPV4 and IPV6 is that more address space. 

The extended addressing size of IPv6 will allow the trillions of new Internet addresses desired to support connectivity to variety range of new devices. 

Features of IPV6

• New Header format
• Larger address space
• Stateful and Stateless address configuration
• IPsec header support
• Prioritized traffic delivery depending upon the class
• Can be extended with new headers with new features 

-DR