This blog will mainly discuss Internet Protocol Version 6, commonly known as IPv6. Before jumping on IPv6, let’s first understand an Internet Protocol. Internet Protocol is the communication protocol of the network layer. It establishes internetworking with the help of its routing function. It is a method by which data is transmitted from one computer/device to another on the internet by uniquely identifying the location.
There are two versions of Internet Protocol:- IPv4 and IPv6.
IPv6
The latest version of the Internet protocol is IPv6. IPv6 was designed by Internet Engineering Task Force, commonly known as IETF. Ipv6 uniquely identifies the location of the devices on the internet. Each device on the internet must have its IP address, which is used to identify it on the internet uniquely. IPv6 uses a 128-bit addressing system. The support range maximum of IPv6 is approximately 340 trillion devices. IPv6 uses eight groups of four hexadecimal digits separated by colons.
Deployment of IPv6
The first group that started deploying IPv6 was carrier networks and internet service providers on their network. According to Internet society’s ‘State of IPv6 development 2017’ report, enterprises are trailing in development, with slightly under a quarter of the enterprises advertising IPv6 prefixes.
Types of IPv6 address
There are three types of IPv6 addresses that are as follows:-
Multicast Address: This type of address represents the group of Internet Protocol devices, and this type of address can only be used as the datagram's destination.
Unicast Address: This type of address uniquely identifies the device on the network and is usually used to refer to a single device that is sending or receiving the data.
Anycast Address: This type of address is used to assign to a different group of interfaces that belongs to different devices.
Now, let's discuss the structure of IPv6.
Structure of IPv6
The address structure of IPv6 is composed of 128 bits aligned in 16 bits blocks. In IPv6, there is a total of eight blocks. In these 128-bits, 40 bits are reserved for ‘Global ID,’ 16 bits are reserved for ‘Subnet ID,’ 64 bits are reserved for ‘Interface ID,’ furthermore, the remaining eight bits are reserved for prefix and ‘L’ variable.
Now, let's discuss the advantages and disadvantages of IPv6.
Advantages of IPv6
Following are the advantages of IPv6:
Reliability: IPv6 is more reliable than IPv4.
More Robust Security: IPSecurity, which provides confidentiality, and data integrity, is embedded into IPv6.
Routing efficiency: IPv6 can efficiently manage the packets.IPv6 establishes Internet Service Providers, which are used to reduce the size of the routing tables.
Faster Speeds: IPv6 supports multicast, which allows flows of bandwidth-intensive packets.
Disadvantages of IPv6
Following are the disadvantages of IPv6:
No backward Compatibility: IPv6 is not available on IPv4 machines, which means one can not run IPv6 on IPv4-supported machines.
Conversion Time: The other major disadvantage of IPv6 is identifying the device on the network uniquely, and converting to IPV4 is very much.
Communication: Communication between IPv4 and IPv6 is also not possible, which means cross-protocol communication is prohibited.
Frequently Asked Questions
What is IPv4?
IPv4 refers to Internet Protocol Version 4. It also helps uniquely identify a device or a node on the internet.
How is the structure of IPv4 different from IPv6?
The addresses in IPv4 are 32-bit, whereas IPv6 addresses are 128-bits. This 32-bit contains two parts: the prefix and the host number.
How to get the IP address of a device?
To get the IP address of a particular device, open the command prompt in windows and type ‘ipconfig.’ It will show the IP address of the device.
Conclusion
In this article, we discussed what Internet Protocol is and what IPv6 is.
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