IPv6

Internet Protocol version 6 (IPv6) is the latest revision of the Internet Protocol (IP), the communications protocol that routes traffic across the Internet. It is intended to replace IPv4, which still carries the vast majority of Internet traffic as of 2013.^[1] IPv6 was developed by the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) to deal with the long-anticipated problem of IPv4 address exhaustion.

Every device on the Internet, such as a computer or mobile telephone, must be assigned an IP address for identification and location addressing in order to communicate with other devices. With the ever-increasing number of new devices being connected to the Internet, the need arose for more addresses than IPv4 is able to accommodate. IPv6 uses a 128-bit address, allowing for 2¹²⁸, or approximately 3.4�-10³⁸ addresses, or more than 7.9�-10²⁸ times as many as IPv4, which uses 32-bit addresses. IPv4 allows for only approximately 4.3 billion addresses. The two protocols are not designed to be interoperable, complicating the transition to IPv6.

IPv6 addresses consist of eight groups of four hexadecimal digits separated by colons, for example 2001:0db8:85a3:0042:1000:8a2e:0370:73 34.

Deployment of IPv6 is accelerating, and a symbolic marketing event, World IPv6 Launch, was organized by major Internet service providers and users on 6 June 2012, for which they deployed IPv6 addresses to some of their users, especially in countries that had been lagging in IPv6 adoption.^[2] Data from Arbor Networks showed a peak of 0.2% of Internet traffic on IPv6 during the launch.^[3] As of late November 2012, IPv6 traffic share was reported to be approaching 1%.^[4]

Technical definition

Decomposition of the IPv6 address representation into its binary form

IPv6, like the more commonly used IPv4 (as of 2013), is an Internet Layer protocol for packet-switched internetworking and provides end-to-end datagram transmission across multiple IP networks. It is described in Internet standard document RFC 2460, published in December 1998.^[5] In addition to offering more addresses, IPv6 also implements features not present in IPv4. It simplifies aspects of address assignment (stateless address autoconfiguration), network renumbering and router announcements when changing network connectivity providers. It simplifies processing of packets by routers by placing the need for packet fragmentation into the end points. The IPv6 subnet size has been standardized by fixing the size of the host identifier portion of an address to 64 bits to facilitate an automatic mechanism for forming the host identifier from link-layer media addressing information (MAC address). Network security is also integrated into the design of the IPv6 architecture, including the option of IPsec.

IPv6 does not implement interoperability features with IPv4, but essentially creates a parallel, independent network. Exchanging traffic between the two networks requires special translator gateways or other transition technologies, such as tunneling protocol like 6to4, 6in4, or Teredo.

Motivation and origin

IPv4

Decomposition of the quad-dotted IPv4 address representation to its binary value

Internet Protocol Version 4 (IPv4) was the first publicly used version of the Internet Protocol. IPv4 addresses are typically displayed as four numbers, each in the range 0 to 255, or 8 bits per number, for a total of 32 bits. Thus IPv4 provides an addressing capability of 2³² or approximately 4.3 billion addresses. Address exhaustion was not initially a concern in IPv4 as this version was originally presumed to be a test of the networking concepts developed by DARPA.

The decision to put a 32-bit address space on there was the result of a year's battle among a bunch of engineers who couldn't make up their minds about 32, 128, or variable-length. And after a year of fighting, I said—I'm now at ARPA, I'm running the program, I'm paying for this stuff, I'm using American tax dollars, and I wanted some progress because we didn't know if this was going to work. So I said: OK, it's 32-bits. That's enough for an experiment; it's 4.3 billion terminations. Even the Defense Department doesn't need 4.3 billion of everything and couldn't afford to buy 4.3 billion edge devices to do a test anyway. So at the time I thought we were doing an experiment to prove the technology and that if it worked we'd have the opportunity to do a production version of it. Well, it just escaped! It got out and people started to use it, and then it became a commercial thing. So this [IPv6] is the production attempt at making the network scalable.

—Vint Cerf, Google IPv6 Conference 2008^[6]

During the first decade of operation of the Internet (by the late 1980s), it became apparent that methods had to be developed to conserve address space. In the early 1990s, even after the redesign of the addressing system using a classless network model, it became clear that this would not suffice to prevent IPv4 address exhaustion, and that further changes to the Internet infrastructure were needed.^[7]

The last available top-level (/8) blocks of 16 million IPv4 addresses were assigned in February 2011 by the Internet Assigned Numbers Authority (IANA) to the five Regional Internet registries (RIRs). However, many free addresses still remain within most assigned blocks, and each RIR will continue with standard address allocation policy until it is at its last /8 block. After that, only blocks of 1024 addresses (a /22) will be made available from the RIR to each Local Internet registry (LIR). As of September 2012, both the Asia-Pacific Network Information Centre (APNIC) and the Réseaux IP Européens Network Coordination Centre (RIPE_NCC) had reached this stage.^[8][9]

Working-group proposal

By the beginning of 1992, several proposals appeared and by the end of 1992, the IETF announced a call for white papers.^[10] In September 1993, the IETF created a temporary, ad-hoc IP Next Generation (IPng) area to deal specifically with IPng issues. The new area was led by Allison Mankin and Scott Bradner, and had a directorate with 15 engineers from diverse backgrounds for direction-setting and preliminary document review:^[7][11] The working-group members were J. Allard (Microsoft), Steve Bellovin (AT&T), Jim Bound (Digital Equipment Corporation), Ross Callon (Wellfleet), Brian Carpenter (CERN), Dave Clark (MIT), John Curran (NEARNET), Steve Deering (Xerox), Dino Farinacci (Cisco), Paul Francis (NTT), Eric Fleischmann (Boeing), Mark Knopper (Ameritech), Greg Minshall (Novell), Rob Ullmann (Lotus), and Lixia Zhang (Xerox).^[12]

The Internet Engineering Task Force adopted the IPng model on 25 July 1994, with the formation of several IPng working groups.^[7] By 1996, a series of RFCs was released defining Internet Protocol version 6 (IPv6), starting with RFC 1883. (Version 5 was used by the experimental Internet Stream Protocol.)

It is widely expected that the Internet will use IPv4 alongside IPv6 for the foreseeable future. IPv4-only and IPv6-only nodes cannot communicate directly, and need assistance from an intermediary gateway or must use other transition mechanisms.

Exhaustion of the unallocated IPv4 address pool

On 3 February 2011, in a ceremony in Miami, the Internet Assigned Numbers Authority (IANA) assigned the last batch of five /8 address blocks to the Regional Internet Registries,^[13] officially depleting the global pool of completely fresh blocks of addresses.^[14] Each /8 address block represents approximately 16.7 million possible addresses, for a total of over 80 million potential addresses combined.

At the time, it was anticipated that these addresses could well be fully consumed within three to six months at then-current rates of allocation.^[15] APNIC was the first RIR to exhaust its regional pool on 15 April 2011, except for a small amount of address space reserved for the transition to IPv6, which will be allocated in a much more restricted way.^[16]

In 2003, the director of Asia-Pacific Network Information Centre (APNIC), Paul Wilson, stated that, based on then-current rates of deployment, the available space would last for one or two decades.^[17] In September 2005, a report by Cisco Systems suggested that the pool of available addresses would be exhausted in as little as 4 to 5 years.^[18] In 2008, a policy process started for the end-game and post-exhaustion era.^[19] In 2010, a daily updated report projected the global address pool exhaustion by the first quarter of 2011, and depletion at the five regional Internet registries before the end of 2011.^[20]

Comparison to IPv4

On the Internet, data is transmitted in the form of network packets. IPv6 specifies a new packet format, designed to minimize packet header processing by routers.^[5][21] Because the headers of IPv4 packets and IPv6 packets are significantly different, the two protocols are not interoperable. However, in most respects, IPv6 is a conservative extension of IPv4. Most transport and application-layer protocols need little or no change to operate over IPv6; exceptions are application protocols that embed internet-layer addresses, such as FTP and NTPv3, where the new address format may cause conflicts with existing protocol syntax.

Larger address space

The main advantage of IPv6 over IPv4 is its larger address space. The length of an IPv6 address is 128 bits, compared to 32 bits in IPv4.^[5] The address space therefore has 2¹²⁸ or approximately 3.4�-10³⁸ addresses. By comparison, this amounts to approximately 4.8�-10²⁸ addresses for each of the seven billion people alive in 2011.^[22] In addition, the IPv4 address space is poorly allocated, with approximately 14% of all available addresses utilized.^[23] While these numbers are large, it wasn't the intent of the designers of the IPv6 address space to assure geographical saturation with usable addresses. Rather, the longer addresses simplify allocation of addresses, enable efficient route aggregation, and allow implementation of special addressing features. In IPv4, complex Classless Inter-Domain Routing (CIDR) methods were developed to make the best use of the small address space. The standard size of a subnet in IPv6 is 2⁶⁴ addresses, the square of the size of the entire IPv4 address space. Thus, actual address space utilization rates will be small in IPv6, but network management and routing efficiency is improved by the large subnet space and hierarchical route aggregation.

Renumbering an existing network for a new connectivity provider with different routing prefixes is a major effort with IPv4.^[24][25] With IPv6, however, changing the prefix announced by a few routers can in principle renumber an entire network, since the host identifiers (the least-significant 64 bits of an address) can be independently self-configured by a host.^[26]

Multicasting

Multicasting, the transmission of a packet to multiple destinations in a single send operation, is part of the base specification in IPv6. In IPv4 this is an optional although commonly implemented feature.^[27] IPv6 multicast addressing shares common features and protocols with IPv4 multicast, but also provides changes and improvements by eliminating the need for certain protocols. IPv6 does not implement traditional IP broadcast, i.e. the transmission of a packet to all hosts on the attached link using a special broadcast address, and therefore does not define broadcast addresses. In IPv6, the same result can be achieved by sending a packet to the link-local all nodes multicast group at address ff02::1, which is analogous to IPv4 multicast to address 224.0.0.1. IPv6 also provides for new multicast implementations, including embedding rendezvous point addresses in an IPv6 multicast group address, which simplifies the deployment of inter-domain solutions.^[28]

In IPv4 it is very difficult for an organization to get even one globally routable multicast group assignment, and the implementation of inter-domain solutions is very arcane.^[29] Unicast address assignments by a local Internet registry for IPv6 have at least a 64-bit routing prefix, yielding the smallest subnet size available in IPv6 (also 64 bits). With such an assignment it is possible to embed the unicast address prefix into the IPv6 multicast address format, while still providing a 32-bit block, the least significant bits of the address, or approximately 4.2 billion multicast group identifiers. Thus each user of an IPv6 subnet automatically has available a set of globally routable source-specific multicast groups for multicast applications.^[30]

Stateless address autoconfiguration (SLAAC)

IPv6 hosts can configure themselves automatically when connected to a routed IPv6 network using the Neighbor Discovery Protocol via Internet Control Message Protocol version 6 (ICMPv6) router discovery messages. When first connected to a network, a host sends a link-local router solicitation multicast request for its configuration parameters; if configured suitably, routers respond to such a request with a router advertisement packet that contains network-layer configuration parameters.^[26]

If IPv6 stateless address autoconfiguration is unsuitable for an application, a network may use stateful configuration with the Dynamic Host Configuration Protocol version 6 (DHCPv6) or hosts may be configured statically.

Routers present a special case of requirements for address configuration, as they often are sources for autoconfiguration information, such as router and prefix advertisements. Stateless configuration for routers can be achieved with a special router renumbering protocol.^[31]

Network-layer security

Internet Protocol Security (IPsec) was originally developed for IPv6, but found widespread deployment first in IPv4, for which it was re-engineered. IPsec was a mandatory specification of the base IPv6 protocol suite,^[5][32] but has since been made optional.^[33]

Simplified processing by routers

In IPv6, the packet header and the process of packet forwarding have been simplified. Although IPv6 packet headers are at least twice the size of IPv4 packet headers, packet processing by routers is generally more efficient,^[5][21] thereby extending the end-to-end principle of Internet design. Specifically:

• The packet header in IPv6 is simpler than that used in IPv4, with many rarely used fields moved to separate optional header extensions.
• IPv6 routers do not perform fragmentation. IPv6 hosts are required to either perform path MTU discovery, perform end-to-end fragmentation, or to send packets no larger than the IPv6 default minimum MTU size of 1280 octets.
• The IPv6 header is not protected by a checksum; integrity protection is assumed to be assured by both link-layer and higher-layer (TCP, UDP, etc.) error detection. UDP/IPv4 may actually have a checksum of 0, indicating no checksum; IPv6 requires UDP to have its own checksum. Therefore, IPv6 routers do not need to recompute a checksum when header fields (such as the time to live (TTL) or hop count) change. This improvement may have been made less necessary by the development of routers that perform checksum computation at link speed using dedicated hardware, but it is still relevant for software-based routers.
• The TTL field of IPv4 has been renamed to Hop Limit, reflecting the fact that routers are no longer expected to compute the time a packet has spent in a queue.

Mobility

Unlike mobile IPv4, mobile IPv6 avoids triangular routing and is therefore as efficient as native IPv6. IPv6 routers may also allow entire subnets to move to a new router connection point without renumbering.^[34]

Options extensibility

The IPv6 packet header has a fixed size (40 octets). Options are implemented as additional extension headers after the IPv6 header, which limits their size only by the size of an entire packet. The extension header mechanism makes the protocol extensible in that it allows future services for quality of service, security, mobility, and others to be added without redesign of the basic protocol.^[5]

Jumbograms

IPv4 limits packets to 65535 (2¹⁶−1) octets of payload. An IPv6 node can optionally handle packets over this limit, referred to as jumbograms, which can be as large as 4294967295 (2³²−1) octets. The use of jumbograms may improve performance over high-MTU links. The use of jumbograms is indicated by the Jumbo Payload Option header.^[35]

Privacy

Like IPv4, IPv6 supports globally unique static IP addresses, which can be used to track a single device's Internet activity. Most devices are used by a single user, so a device's activity is often assumed to be equivalent to a user's activity. This causes privacy concerns in the same way that cookies can also track a user's navigation through sites.

The privacy enhancements in IPv6 have been mostly developed in response to a misunderstanding.^[36] Interfaces can have addresses based on the MAC address of the machine (the EUI-64 format), but this is not a requirement. Even when an address is not based on the MAC address though, the interface's address is (contrary to IPv4) usually global instead of local, which makes it much easier to identify a single user through the IP address.

Privacy extensions for IPv6 have been defined to address these privacy concerns.^[37] When privacy extensions are enabled, the operating system generates ephemeral IP addresses by concatenating a randomly generated host identifier with the assigned network prefix. These ephemeral addresses, instead of trackable static IP addresses, are used to communicate with remote hosts. The use of ephemeral addresses makes it difficult to accurately track a user's Internet activity by scanning activity streams for a single IPv6 address.^[38]

Privacy extensions are enabled by default in Windows, Mac OS X (since 10.7), and iOS (since version 4.3).^[39] Some Linux distributions have enabled privacy extensions as well.^[40]

Privacy extensions do not protect the user from other forms of activity tracking, such as tracking cookies. Privacy extensions do little to protect the user from tracking if only one or two hosts are using a given network prefix, and the activity tracker is privy to this information. In this scenario, the network prefix is the unique identifier for tracking. Network prefix tracking is less of a concern if the user's ISP assigns a dynamic network prefix via DHCP.^[41][42]

Packet format

IPv6 packet header

An IPv6 packet has two parts: a header and payload.

The header consists of a fixed portion with minimal functionality required for all packets and may be followed by optional extensions to implement special features.

The fixed header occupies the first 40 octets (320 bits) of the IPv6 packet. It contains the source and destination addresses, traffic classification options, a hop counter, and the type of the optional extension or payload which follows the header. This Next Header field tells the receiver how to interpret the data which follows the header. If the packet contains options, this field contains the option type of the next option. The "Next Header" field of the last option, points to the upper-layer protocol that is carried in the packet's payload.

Extension headers carry options that are used for special treatment of a packet in the network, e.g., for routing, fragmentation, and for security using the IPsec framework.

Without special options, a payload must be less than 64kB. With a Jumbo Payload option (in a Hop-By-Hop Options extension header), the payload must be less than 4 GB.

Unlike in IPv4, routers never fragment a packet. Hosts are expected to use Path MTU Discovery to make their packets small enough to reach the destination without needing to be fragmented. See IPv6 Packet#Fragmentation.

Addressing

Compared to IPv4, the most obvious advantage of IPv6 is its larger address space. IPv4 addresses are 32 bits long and number about 4.3�-10⁹ (4.3 billion).^[43] IPv6 addresses are 128 bits long and number about 3.4�-10³⁸ (340 undecillion). IPv6's addresses are deemed enough for the foreseeable future.^[44]

IPv6 addresses are written in eight groups of four hexadecimal digits separated by colons, such as 2001:0db8:85a3:0000:0000:8a2e:0370:73 34. IPv6 unicast addresses other than those that start with binary 000 are logically divided into two parts: a 64-bit (sub-)network prefix, and a 64-bit interface identifier.^[45]

For stateless address autoconfiguration (SLAAC) to work, subnets require a /64 address block, as defined in RFC 4291 section 2.5.1. Local Internet registries get assigned at least /32 blocks, which they divide among ISPs.^[46] The obsolete RFC 3177 recommended the assignment of a /48 to end-consumer sites. This was replaced by RFC 6177, which "recommends giving home sites significantly more than a single /64, but does not recommend that every home site be given a /48 either". /56s are specifically considered. It remains to be seen if ISPs will honor this recommendation; for example, during initial trials, Comcast customers were given a single /64 network.^[47]

IPv6 addresses are classified by three types of networking methodologies: unicast addresses identify each network interface, anycast addresses identify a group of interfaces, usually at different locations of which the nearest one is automatically selected, and multicast addresses are used to deliver one packet to many interfaces. The broadcast method is not implemented in IPv6. Each IPv6 address has a scope, which specifies in which part of the network it is valid and unique. Some addresses are unique only on the local (sub-)network. Others are globally unique.

Some IPv6 addresses are reserved for special purposes, such as loopback, 6to4 tunneling, and Teredo tunneling, as outlined in RFC 5156. Also, some address ranges are considered special, such as link-local addresses for use on the local link only, Unique Local addresses (ULA), as described in RFC 4193, and solicited-node multicast addresses used in the Neighbor Discovery Protocol.

IPv6 in the Domain Name System

In the Domain Name System, hostnames are mapped to IPv6 addresses by AAAA resource records, so-called quad-A records. For reverse resolution, the IETF reserved the domain ip6.arpa, where the name space is hierarchically divided by the 1-digit hexadecimal representation of nibble units (4 bits) of the IPv6 address. This scheme is defined in RFC 3596.

Address format

An IPv6 address is represented by 8 groups of 16-bit values, each group represented as 4 hexadecimal digits and separated by colons (:). For example:

2001:0db8:0000:0000:0000:ff00:0042:83 29

The hexadecimal digits are not case-sensitive; e.g., the groups 0DB8 and 0db8 are equivalent.

An IPv6 address may be abbreviated by using one or more of the following rules:

1. Remove one or more leading zeroes from one or more groups of hexadecimal digits; this is usually done to either all or none of the leading zeroes. (For example, convert the group 0042 to 42.)
2. Omit consecutive sections of zeroes, using a double colon (::) to denote the omitted sections. The double colon may only be used once in any given address, as the address would be indeterminate if the double colon was used multiple times. A double colon may not be used to denote an omitted single section of zeroes.^[48] (For example, 2001:db8::1:2 is valid, but 2001:db8::1::2 or 2001:db8::1:1:1:1:1 are not permitted.)

Below is an example of these rules:

Below are the text representations of these addresses:

Initial address: 2001:0db8:0000:0000:0000:ff00:0042:83 29

After removing all leading zeroes: 2001:db8:0:0:0:ff00:42:8329

After omitting consecutive sections of zeroes: 2001:0db8::ff00:0042:8329

After doing both: 2001:db8::ff00:42:8329

Another example is the loopback address, which can be abbreviated to ::1 by using both rules above:^[43]

Initial address: 0000:0000:0000:0000:0000:0000:0000:00 01

After removing all leading zeroes: 0:0:0:0:0:0:0:1

After omitting consecutive sections of zeroes: ::0001

After doing both: ::1

As IPv6 addresses may have more than one representation, which can lead to confusion; there is a proposed standard for representing them in text.^[49]

Transition mechanisms

Until IPv6 completely supplants IPv4, a number of transition mechanisms^[50] are needed to enable IPv6-only hosts to reach IPv4 services and to allow isolated IPv6 hosts and networks to reach each other over IPv4-only infrastructure.

Many of these transition mechanisms use tunneling to encapsulate IPv6 traffic within IPv4 networks. This is an imperfect solution, which may increase latency and cause problems with Path MTU Discovery.^[51] Tunneling protocols are a temporary solution for networks that do not support native dual-stack, where both IPv6 and IPv4 run independently.

Dual IP stack implementation

Dual-stack (or native dual-stack) refers to side-by-side implementation of IPv4 and IPv6. That is, both protocols run on the same network infrastructure, and there's no need to encapsulate IPv6 inside IPv4 (using tunneling) or vice-versa. Dual-stack is defined in RFC 4213.^[52]

Although this is the most desirable IPv6 implementation, as it avoids the complexities and pitfalls of tunneling (such as security, increased latency, management overhead, and a reduced PMTU),^[53] it is not always possible, since outdated network equipment may not support IPv6. A good example is cable TV-based internet access. In modern cable TV networks, the core of the HFC network (such as large core routers) are likely to support IPv6. However, other network equipment (such as a CMTS) or customer equipment (like cable modems) may require software updates or hardware upgrades to support IPv6. This means cable network operators must resort to tunneling until the backbone equipment supports native dual-stack.

Tunneling

Because not all networks support dual-stack, tunneling is used for IPv4 networks to talk to IPv6 networks (and vice-versa). Many current internet users do not have IPv6 dual-stack support, and thus cannot reach IPv6 sites directly. Instead, they must use IPv4 infrastructure to carry IPv6 packets. This is done using a technique known as tunneling, which encapsulates IPv6 packets within IPv4, in effect using IPv4 as a link layer for IPv6.

IP protocol 41 indicates IPv4 packets which encapsulate IPv6 datagrams. Some routers or network address translation devices may block protocol 41. To pass through these devices, you might use UDP packets to encapsulate IPv6 datagrams. Other encapsulation schemes, such as AYIYA or Generic Routing Encapsulation, are also popular.

Conversely, on IPv6-only internet links, when access to IPv4 network facilities is needed, tunneling of IPv4 over IPv6 protocol occurs, using the IPv6 as a link layer for IPv4.

Automatic tunneling

Automatic tunneling refers to a technique by which the routing infrastructure automatically determines the tunnel endpoints. Some automatic tunneling techniques are below.

6to4 is recommended by RFC 3056. It uses protocol 41 encapsulation.^[54] Tunnel endpoints are determined by using a well-known IPv4 anycast address on the remote side, and embedding IPv4 address information within IPv6 addresses on the local side. 6to4 is the most common tunnel protocol currently deployed.

Teredo is an automatic tunneling technique that uses UDP encapsulation and can allegedly cross multiple NAT nodes.^[55] IPv6, including 6to4 and Teredo tunneling, are enabled by default in Windows Vista^[56] and Windows 7. Most Unix systems implement only 6to4, but Teredo can be provided by third-party software such as Miredo.

ISATAP^[57] treats the IPv4 network as a virtual IPv6 local link, with mappings from each IPv4 address to a link-local IPv6 address. Unlike 6to4 and Teredo, which are inter-site tunnelling mechanisms, ISATAP is an intra-site mechanism, meaning that it is designed to provide IPv6 connectivity between nodes within a single organisation.

Configured and automated tunneling (6in4)

6in4 tunneling requires the tunnel endpoints to be explicitly configured, either by an administrator manually or the operating system's configuration mechanisms, or by an automatic service known as a tunnel broker;^[58] this is also referred to as automated tunneling. Configured tunneling is usually more deterministic and easier to debug than automatic tunneling, and is therefore recommended for large, well-administered networks. Automated tunneling provides a compromise between the ease of use of automatic tunneling and the deterministic behavior of configured tunneling.

Raw encapsulation of IPv6 packets using IPv4 protocol number 41 is recommended for configured tunneling; this is sometimes known as 6in4 tunneling. As with automatic tunneling, encapsulation within UDP may be used in order to cross NAT boxes and firewalls.

Proxying and translation for IPv6-only hosts

After the regional Internet registries have exhausted their pools of available IPv4 addresses, it is likely that hosts newly added to the Internet might only have IPv6 connectivity. For these clients to have backward-compatible connectivity to existing IPv4-only resources, suitable IPv6 transition mechanisms must be deployed.

One form of address translation is the use of a dual-stack application-layer proxy server, for example a web proxy.

NAT-like techniques for application-agnostic translation at the lower layers in routers and gateways have been proposed. The NAT-PT standard was dropped because of criticisms,^[59] however more recently the continued low adoption of IPv6 has prompted a new standardization effort of a technology called NAT64.

IPv6 readiness

Compatibility with IPv6 networking is mainly a software or firmware issue. However, much of the older hardware that could in principle be upgraded is likely to be replaced instead. The American Registry for Internet Numbers (ARIN) suggested that all Internet servers be prepared to serve IPv6-only clients by January 2012.^[60] Sites will only be accessible over NAT64 if they do not use IPv4 literals as well.

Software

Host software can be IPv4-only, IPv6-only, dual-stack, or hybrid dual-stack. Most personal computers running recent operating system versions are operable on IPv6. Many popular applications with network capabilities are compliant, and most others could be easily upgraded with help from the developers.^{[citation needed]}

Some software transitioning mechanisms are outlined in RFC 4038, RFC 3493, and RFC 3542.

IPv4-mapped IPv6 addresses

Hybrid dual-stack IPv6/IPv4 implementations recognize a special class of addresses, the IPv4-mapped IPv6 addresses. In these addresses, the first 80 bits are zero, the next 16 bits are one, and the remaining 32 bits are the IPv4 address. One may see these addresses with the first 96 bits written in the standard IPv6 format, and the remaining 32 bits written in the customary dot-decimal notation of IPv4. For example, ::ffff:192.0.2.128 represents the IPv4 address 192.0.2.128. A deprecated format for IPv4-compatible IPv6 addresses was ::192.0.2.128.^[61]

Because of the significant internal differences between IPv4 and IPv6, some of the lower-level functionality available to programmers in the IPv6 stack does not work identically with IPv4-mapped addresses. Some common IPv6 stacks do not implement the IPv4-mapped address feature, either because the IPv6 and IPv4 stacks are separate implementations (e.g., Microsoft Windows 2000, XP, and Server 2003), or because of security concerns (OpenBSD).^[62] On these operating systems, a program must open a separate socket for each IP protocol it uses. On some systems, e.g., the Linux kernel, NetBSD, and FreeBSD, this feature is controlled by the socket option IPV6_V6ONLY, as specified in RFC 3493.^[63]

Hardware and embedded systems

Low-level equipment such as network adapters and network switches may not be affected by the change, since they transmit link-layer frames without inspecting the contents. However, networking devices that obtain IP addresses or perform routing of IP packets do need to understand IPv6.

Most equipment would be IPv6 capable with a software or firmware update if the device has sufficient storage and memory space for the new IPv6 stack. However, manufacturers may be reluctant to spend on software development costs for hardware they have already sold when they are poised for new sales from IPv6-ready equipment.^{[citation needed]}

In some cases, non-compliant equipment needs to be replaced because the manufacturer no longer exists or software updates are not possible, for example, because the network stack is implemented in permanent read-only memory.

The CableLabs consortium published the 160 Mbit/s DOCSIS 3.0 IPv6-ready specification for cable modems in August 2006. The widely used DOCSIS 2.0 does not support IPv6. The new 'DOCSIS 2.0 + IPv6' standard supports IPv6, which may on the cable modem side require only a firmware upgrade.^[64][65] It is expected that only 60% of cable modems' servers and 40% of cable modems will be DOCSIS 3.0 by 2011.^[66] However, most ISPs that support DOCSIS 3.0 do not support IPv6 across their networks.

Other equipment which is typically not IPv6-ready ranges from Voice over Internet Protocol devices to laboratory equipment and printers.^{[citation needed]}

Shadow networks

A side effect of IPv6 implementation may be the emergence of so-called "shadow networks" caused by IPv6 traffic flowing into IPv4 networks where the IPv4 security in place is unable to properly identify it.^[67] Shadow networks have been found occuring on business networks in which enterprises are replacing Windows XP systems, that do not have an IPv6 stack enabled by default, with Windows 7 systems, which do.^[68]

Deployment

The introduction of Classless Inter-Domain Routing (CIDR) in the Internet routing and IP address allocation methods in 1993 and the extensive use of network address translation (NAT) delayed the inevitable IPv4 address exhaustion, but the final phase of exhaustion started on 3 February 2011.^[20] However, despite a decade long development and implementation history as a Standards Track protocol, general worldwide deployment is still in its infancy. As of October 2011, about 3% of domain names and 12% of the networks on the internet have IPv6 protocol support.^[69]

IPv6 has been implemented on all major operating systems in use in commercial, business, and home consumer environments. Since 2008, the domain name system can be used in IPv6. IPv6 was first used in a major world event during the 2008 Summer Olympic Games,^[70] the largest showcase of IPv6 technology since the inception of IPv6.^[71] The Federal U.S. Government and countries like China are also starting to require IPv6 capability on their equipment.

In 2009, Verizon mandated IPv6 operation and deprecated IPv4 as an optional capability for cellular (LTE) hardware.^[72] T-Mobile USA followed suit. As of June 2012, T-Mobile USA supports external IPv6 access.^[73]

See also

• China Next Generation Internet
• Perbandingan -- IPv6 application support
• Perbandingan -- IPv6 support by major transit providers
• Perbandingan -- IPv6 support in operating systems
• Perbandingan -- IPv6 support in routers
• DoD IPv6 Product Certification
• Daftar/Tabel -- IPv6 tunnel brokers
• University of New Hampshire InterOperability Laboratory

References

External links

• IPv6 at the Open Directory Project
• Why IPv6 matters to radio stations
• Security implications of implementing IPv6
• Free Pool of IPv4 Address Space Depleted
• An article about IPv6 in Linux by Rami Rosen
• An Introduction and Statistics about IPV6
• Google IPv6 check
• IPv6 Introduction and Configuration by IBM Redbooks