What if the Internet ran out of room? In fact, it’s already happening. This is why there’s a new version of the internet, IPv6, being discussed by Vint Cerf, Chief Internet Evangelist at Google, and a founding father of the Internet.
Why is the Internet Running Out of Room?
Similar to phones that use a system of phone numbers to place calls, every Internet-connect device gets a unique number known as an “IP address” that connects it to the global online network. The issue with this is that the current Internet addressing system (IPv4) only has room for approximately 4 billion addresses. This is not nearly enough for the world’s people, let alone the devices that are online today and those that will be in the future: computers, phones, TVs, watches, fridges and so on. There’s already more than 4 billion devices that share addresses. As IPv4 runs out of free addresses, everyone will need to share.
How is this Issue Going to be Resolved?
It is pretty clear the Internet needs more IP addresses, but how many more, exactly? Well, how about 340 trillion trillion trillion (or 340,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000)? This is how many IP addresses the Internet’s new “piping,” IPv6, can handle. This number is large enough to give everyone on Earth their own list of billions of IP addresses. Large enough, in other words, to offer the Internet virtually infinite room to grow, from now into the foreseeable future.
What is IPv6?
IPv6 stands for Internet Protocol Version 6. It is a set of specifications from the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) that’s essentially an upgrade of IP version 4 (IPv4). Similar to those of IPv4, the basics of IPv6 include devices that can use IPv6 as source and destination addresses to pass packets over a network, and tools such as ping work for network testing as they do in IPv4, with some slight variations.
IPv6 vs. IPv4
One of the most obvious improvements in IPv6 over IPv4 is that IP addresses are lengthened from 32 bits to 128 bits. This extension anticipates healthy future growth of the Internet and provides relief for what was perceived as an impending shortage of network addresses. Not only does IPv6 support auto-configuration to help correct most of the shortcomings in version 4, but it also has integrated security and mobility features.
IPv6 features include:
- Supports source and destination addresses that are 128 bits (15 bytes) long.
- Requires IPSec support.
- Uses Flow Label field to identify packet flow for QoS handling by router.
- Allows the host to send fragments packets but not routers.
- Doesn’t include a checksum in the header.
- Uses a link-local scope all-nodes multicast address.
- Does not require manual configuration or DHCP.
- Uses host address (AAAA) resource records in DNS to map host names to IPv6 addresses.
- Uses pointer (PTR) resource records in the IP6.ARPA DNS domain to map IPv6 addresses to host names.
- Supports a 1280-byte packet size (without fragmentation).
- Moves optional data to IPv6 extension headers.
- Uses Multicast Neighbor Solicitation messages to resolve IP addresses to link-layer addresses.
- Uses Multicast Listener Discovery (MLD) messages to manage membership in local subnet groups.
- Uses ICMPv6 Router Solicitation and Router Advertisement messages to determine the IP address of the best default gateway.
When is this Transition Happening?
While we believe IPv6 is essential to the continued health and growth of the Internet and that by allowing all devices to talk to each other directly, IPv6 enables new innovative services. Although the transition has begun, replacing the Internet’s plumbing will ultimately take some time. The world IPv6 Launch on June 6, 2012 marks the official start of a coordinated rollout by major websites and Internet service and equipment providers.