Ip V6 Essay, Research Paper

IPng is a new version of the Internet Protocol, designed as a successor to IP version 4 though they are both interoperable. IPng is assigned IP version number 6 and is formally called IPv6. IPv6 was designed to take an evolutionary step from IPv4. It was not a design goal to take a radical step away from IPv4. Functions that work in IPv4 were kept in IPv6. Functions that didn t work were removed.

Expanded routing and addressing capabilities were improved. IPv6 increases the IP address size from 32 bits to 128 bits, to support more levels of addressing hierarchy and a much greater number of addressable nodes, and simpler auto-configuration of addresses. The scalability of multicast routing is improved by adding a “scope” field to multicast addresses. A new type of address called a “anycast address” is defined, to identify sets of nodes where a packet sent to an anycast address is delivered to one of the nodes. The use of anycast addresses in the IPv6 source route allows nodes to control the path, which their traffic flows. Header format was simplified. Some IPv4 header fields have been dropped or made optional, to reduce the common-case processing cost of packet handling and to keep the bandwidth cost of the IPv6 header as low as possible despite the increased size of the addresses. Even though the IPv6 addresses are four times longer than the IPv4 addresses, the IPv6 header is only twice the size of the IPv4 header. Improved support for options are also considered. Changes in the way IP header options are encoded allows for more efficient forwarding, less stringent limits on the length of options, and greater flexibility for introducing new options in the future. Quality-of-service capabilities allow different levels of handling. A new capability is added to enable the labeling of packets belonging to particular traffic “flows” for which the sender requests special handling, such as non-default quality of service or “real- time” service. Lastly, Authentication and privacy capabilities are one of the main implementations. IPv6 includes the definition of extensions, which provide support for authentication, data integrity, and confidentiality. This is included as a basic element of IPv6 and will be included in all implementations.

The description provided about IPv6 is just an overview. Describing each new implementation in IPv6 in detail could possibly require a whole book. In summary, IPv6 is designed to run well on high performance networks and at the same time is still efficient for low bandwidth networks. In addition, it provides a platform for new internet functionality that will be required in the near future.