Why Ipv6 Is Better Than Ipv4
Differences between IPv4 and IPv6 – Linksys Official Support
The Internet Protocol version 4 (IPv4) is a protocol for use on packet-switched Link Layer networks (e. g. Ethernet). IPv4 provides an addressing capability of approximately 4. 3 billion addresses.
The Internet Protocol version 6 (IPv6) is more advanced and has better features compared to IPv4. It has the capability to provide an infinite number of addresses. It is replacing IPv4 to accommodate the growing number of networks worldwide and help solve the IP address exhaustion problem.
One of the differences between IPv4 and IPv6 is the appearance of the IP addresses. IPv4 uses four 1 byte decimal numbers, separated by a dot (i. e. 192. 168. 1. 1), while IPv6 uses hexadecimal numbers that are separated by colons (i. fe80::d4a8:6435:d2d8:d9f3b11).
Below is the summary of the differences between the IPv4 and IPv6:
IPv4IPv6No. of bits on IP Address32128FormatdecimalhexadecimalCapable of Addresses4. 3 billioninfinite numberHow to ping ping
Advantages of IPv6 over IPv4:
IPv6 simplified the router’s task compared to IPv4. IPv6 is more compatible to mobile networks than IPv4. IPv6 allows for bigger payloads than what is allowed in IPv4. IPv6 is used by less than 1% of the networks, while IPv4 is still in use by the remaining 99%.
Related Articles:
Checking the computer’s IPv6 AddressHow to verify if your system is capable of IPv6 connectivityLinksys devices that support IPv6
Why is IPv6 better? – Press Room – Magyar Telekom
About IPv4
The communication between
millions of computers and network endpoints (e. g. : printers, cameras, mobile
devices, etc. ) around the world is done using a common language, which is
called the Internet Protocol (IP). In this system, network endpoints (computers,
printers, cameras, mibile devices, etc. ) are identified by a so-called IP
address, which is in its fourth generation, hence the name: IPv4.
An IPv4 address may look like
the following sequence of numbers: 84. 2. 36. 220
In this format all of it’s
elements represent 8 bits. All bits can show two values (0 and 1), which means
that one element can appear in 2
8 versions. As a result, this type
of numeric system can distinguish among 2
32 IP addresses.
In the beginning, this type of
addressing was absolutely satisfactory, but because of the world wide web’s unexpected
growth, network professionals are facing more and more issues. One of these
problems is that the amount of distributed addresses is not enough. Each second,
version 4 IP addresses are being distributed, which, according to preliminary estimations,
shall be used up within a short period of time. Another problem is that the
protocol does not support mobility, and it is not possible to support
encryption built into the protocol.
IPv6 was created to solve the
above issues. However, the implementation of IPv6 is complicated by the fact
that, although the two versions are similar in many ways, they handle data
packages, transmitted through the network, differently, hence, they cannot
operate concurrently.
A few words about IPv6
IPv6 (Internet Protocol
version 6) is the next version after IPv4. Instead of the 32 bits used by IPv4
for addressing, IPv6 uses 128 bits for the same purpose – which theoretically
makes it possible to assign 2
128 addresses – hence, it offers
long term solutions to most of the problems that emerged while using IPv4.
For example, an IPv6 address
looks like the following sequence of numbers: 2001:4C48:100:162:8C40:CCB:1FC0:1723
The 128 bit IPv6 address is
usually represented as 8 groups of up to 4 hexadecimal digits that are
separated with colons, where each element stands for 16 bits.
As a result, all devices
connected to the network will have a public, globally unique IPv6 address that
can be sent over the Internet, which renders the Network Address Translation
(NAT) service, used by firewalls and routers in IPv4 networks, unnecessary. This
is needed because this way the central element of a given subnet, for example,
a router, would get only one unique IPv4 IP address, then, with a built-in
function, it would give unique identification to each endpoint of the subnet – which
however, won’t be unique on the Internet.
The advantages of IPv6 over
IPv4
IPv6 has many additional
advantages over IPv4 besides the fact that it has a larger address space:
IPv6
has a built-in feature to support
multicast
1 transmission,
while it was only optional in case of IPv4. IPv6 devices set one,
only locally available and valid IPv6 address
to all clients on the network connected to the subnets, which enables communication
with all endpoints connected to a given subnet, regardless of whether a router
is present.
2
IIn terms of security solutions,
the IPv6 protocol contains mandatory built-in
IPsec support
(verification and encryption), while in case if IPv4 this feature is only
optional
In case
of IPv4 the maximum limit for data package size is 64 kB (kilobyte), while with
IPv6 this size can go up to 4 GB (gigabytes), which significantly increases the
speed of data transmission.
You can find further details about IPv6 on the following sites:
Nemzeti
Információs Infrastruktúra Fejlesztési Program (National Information
Infrastructure Development Program /NIIF/ Hungarian)
Wikipedia
(Hungarian)
(English)
On the following sites you can
test if the service is already working on your devices:ű
Test
site 1. (Hungarian)
Test site
2. (English)
Application and services
operating on IPv6
Today there are numerous
applications that support IPv6, it would be too long to list all of them. You
can find useful information on the following English language sites about which
operating systems and network applications can co-operate with the new protocol:
Operating Systems
Network
applications
Google and IPv6 (Google over
IPv6)
The world’s leading internet
search engine makes every effort to have its services available through the
IPv6 protocol as well. Currently, the following Google services work through
IPv6: Google search (picture, blog, code search), Google Alerts, Google Docs,
Google Finance, Gmail, Google Health, iGoogle, Google News, Google Reader,
Picasa and Google Maps.
You can find further
information about the operation of IPv6 on the following website:
1
Multicast is a type of connection on the internet which
– as opposed to the traditional one (unicast) – can connect not only two, but
any number of computers. In these cases data do not have to be sent to each
device separately, rather, it is enough to send them once to a group address,
which represents a significant saving of bandwidth compared to unicast.
Additionally, IPv6 supports DHCPv6 and SLAAC (Stateless Address Auto-) based configuration
of network addresses. Thanks to the latter, IPv6 clients can generate and
configure their own globally accessible and unique addresses, after being
connected to an IPv6 network and router.
6 Advantages of IPv6 to IPv4 Address – Hostname.com
On April 15, 2011, the internet officially ran out of IPv4 addresses, and people were terrified. “Since we’ve run out of IPv4 addresses, what will happen to our websites? ” “Does this mean we shouldn’t bother getting web hosting? ” “But I just registered my domain! Did I just waste my money? ” These were some of the questions being screamed by scared webmasters.
But, as it turns out, IPv6 isn’t scary at all. In fact, there are several advantages of IPv6 to IPv4. And in this guide, we’ll walk you through them.
But just so we know we’re on the same page…
An IP address is a numerical label assigned to every device that’s connected to the internet. Having an IP address allows a device to communicate with other devices that also have an IP address.
IPv4 stands for “Internet Protocol version 4”. It’s the original format for IP addresses, and it allowed for 4 billion unique IP addresses. That seemed like a lot of IP addresses in 1981 when there were relatively few devices that could connect to the internet. But now, not only do most people have multiple computers connected to the internet, but there are also smart cars, smart TVs and even smart refrigerators with IP addresses. No wonder we ran out!
Enter: IPv6.
IPv6 is the IP address format that was designed to supplement IPv4.
Comparing IPv6 to IPv4
IPv4 is a 32-Bit IP address whereas IPv6 is a 128-Bit IP address. This means it’ll take a lot longer to run out of IPv6 addresses than it took for us to run out of IPv4 addresses.
IPv4 is a numeric addressing method while IPv6 uses an alphanumeric addressing method. This is another reason it’ll be harder to run out of IPv6 addresses.
IPv4 includes checksum fields and IPv6 has none. Most technology already has checksum and error-control capabilities. Getting rid of IP-level checksum means that the checksum doesn’t need to be recalculated at every router hop.
IPv4 employs ARP (Address Resolution Protocol) to map to MAC address while IPv6 uses NDP (Neighbour Discovery Protocol) to map to MAC address. The Secure Neighbour Discovery (SEND) protocol can enable cryptographic confirmation that a host is who it claims to be at connection time. This makes Address Resolution Protocol (ARP) poisoning and other naming-based attacks more difficult.
IPv4 binary bits are separated by a dot whereas IPv6 binary bits are separated by a colon. This means IPv4 addresses typically look like this 121. 54. 021 while IPv6 addresses typically look like this 2012:6578:6574::7658.
See? Not so scary after all. And now that you understand a bit more about the comparisons of IPv6 to IPv4, what are the advantages of IPv6 to IPv4?
1. Simpler header format
IPv4 offers 12 header fields whereas IPv6 offers 8 header fields. The introduction of extension headers makes it possible to implement optional information into IPv6 packages much more effectively than with IPv4. Because routers on the delivery path of a package don’t process IPv6 extension headers, with IPv6, these are only read at the destination, which means a significant improvement of router performance.
2. More efficient routing
IPv6 reduces the size of routing tables, which makes routing more hierarchical and therefore more efficient. IPv6 also lets ISPs combine the prefixes of their customers’ networks into a single prefix. Additionally, with IPv6, the source device, rather than the router, handles fragmentation, using a protocol for discovering the path’s Maximum Transition Unit (MTU).
3. More security
Because IPv6 uses 128-bit addresses, the pool of possible addresses is 340 undecillion (3. 4×1038). IPv4’s 32-bit addresses allow for only 4. 3 billion addresses. A bigger pool of addresses obviously means more scalability, but, less obviously, it also means increased security. That’s because under the IPv6 system, host scanning and identification is more difficult for hackers.
When IPv4 was first developed, internet security wasn’t as much of an issue as it is today. This explains why the few security protocols available for IPv4 appear to have been developed as an afterthought. But IPv6 was built with security in mind. Many of the IPv4’s optional security requirements have been baked into IPv6 as default requirements. For instance, IPv6 automatically encrypts traffic and checks packet integrity. This gives standard internet traffic VPN-level protection.
4. True Quality of Service
Quality of Service (QoS) is a tool that lets you train your router to allocate specific portions of your available bandwidth to different applications. Good Quality of Service means, for example, your computer won’t struggle to play a video because it happens to be trying to download a massive file at the same time.
Quality of Service technically exists in IPv4, but it doesn’t actually work. Packets can technically be assigned different priorities, but routers usually just ignore the QoS flag, and some even mark all packets “Highest priority”, which, as you might imagine, defeats the purpose.
But IPv6 has an integrated mechanism for securing Quality of Service. It prioritises urgent packages, which makes handling those packages more efficient. It even has specialised fields (“traffic class” and “flow label”) that are directly responsible for ensuring Quality of Service.
5. Easier file-sharing.
With IPv6, there are two separate address spaces for private addressing. These are called “link-local” and “site-local”. A link-local address has lots of useful functions, including hosting auto configuration by simply querying the router (no DHCP necessary! ) and setting up ad-hoc LANs without a router. This means you can connect PCs and share files without having to bother with file-sharing protocols.
6. No more NAT (Network Address Translation).
Because there aren’t enough IPv4 addresses, much of the internet relies on NAT for connectivity. NAT was great for extending the life of IPv4, but it also forces every packet that enters or leaves your network to be examined and altered. And services that use multiple ports have a particularly hard time, since they need to undergo all sorts of cumbersome adjustments to work. With IPv6, every device can have its own unique IP address, which eliminates the need for NAT!
Understanding IPv6 helps us make better decisions, such as whether we should go ahead and create that website we’ve been dreaming about (Yes! ) and whether we should be staging protests to prolong the life of IPv4. (No. Now, please lower your placard. )
Frequently Asked Questions about why ipv6 is better than ipv4
Why is IPv6 preferable than IPv4?
IPv6 (Internet Protocol version 6) is the next version after IPv4. Instead of the 32 bits used by IPv4 for addressing, IPv6 uses 128 bits for the same purpose – which theoretically makes it possible to assign 2 128 addresses – hence, it offers long term solutions to most of the problems that emerged while using IPv4.
What are four benefits of IPv6 over IPv4?
6 advantages of IPv6 to IPv4Simpler header format. IPv4 offers 12 header fields whereas IPv6 offers 8 header fields. … More efficient routing. … More security. … True Quality of Service. … Easier file-sharing. … No more NAT (Network Address Translation).Jul 27, 2020
Which is better IPv4 or IPv6?
From the end-to-end connectivity perspective, IPv6 provides better results than IPv4. IPv4 is a 32 bit IP address, whereas IPv6 is a 128 bit IP address. … IPv6 provides much better Multicast and Anycast abilities than IPv4.
