IPv6

- Overview

IPv6 is a newer version of IP that uses a 128-bit address format containing numbers and letters. Why does IPv6 exist? While 4.3 billion potential IP addresses in IPv4 may seem like a lot, we need more IP addresses! 

There are a lot of people in the world with a lot of devices. This is an even bigger problem with the rise of IoT devices (Internet of Things) and sensors, as they greatly expand the number of connected devices. Simply put, the world is running out of only IPv4 addresses, which is the biggest reason we need IPv6.

- IPv4 vs. IPv6

The most obvious difference is that IPv4 uses 32-bit addresses, while IPv6 uses 128-bit addresses. IPv4 supports approximately 4.29 billion addresses. IPv6, on the other hand, supports 2¹²⁸ different addresses.

This means that IPv6 provides 1,028 times more addresses than IPv4, which fundamentally solves the "address exhaustion" problem (at least for the foreseeable future). 

IPv6 is also an alphanumeric address separated by colons, while IPv4 is just numbers separated by periods. 

- Technical Differences between IPv4 and IPv6

There are also some technical differences between IPv4 and IPv6, although non-developers don't really need to understand them. 

Some of the most notable technical differences are:

• IPv6 includes built-in Quality of Service (QoS).
• IPv6 has a built-in network security layer (IPsec).
• IPv6 eliminates Network Address Translation (NAT) and allows end-to-end connectivity at the IP layer.
• Multicast is part of the IPv6 base specification, whereas in IPv4 it is optional. Multicast allows packets to be transmitted to multiple destinations in one operation.
• IPv6 has larger packet headers (approximately twice as large as IPv4).

[More to come ...]