Next generation internet - - -

1. WHY IS THE CURRENT IP INADEQUATE?

The problem has been investigated and formulated by the ROAD group, but
briefly reduces to the following:

- Exhaustion of IP Class B Address Space

- Exhaustion of IP Address Space in General

- Non-hierarchical nature of address allocation leading to flat
routing space.

Internet Protocol version 6 (IPv6) is a network layer protocol for packet-switched internetworks. It is designated as the successor of IPv4, the current version of the Internet Protocol, for general use on the Internet.

The main improvement brought by IPv6 is the increase in the number of addresses available for networked devices, allowing, for example, each mobile phone and mobile electronic device to have its own address. IPv4 supports 232 (about 4.3 billion) addresses, which is inadequate for giving even one address to every living person, let alone supporting embedded and portable devices. IPv6, however, supports 2128 (about 340 billion billion billion billion) addresses, or approximately 5×1028 addresses for each of the roughly 6.5 billion people alive today. With such a large address space available, IPv6 nodes can have as many universally scoped addresses as they need, and network address translation is not required.

Larger address space

The main feature of IPv6 that is driving adoption today is the larger address space: addresses in IPv6 are 128 bits long versus 32 bits in IPv4.

Stateless autoconfiguration of hosts

IPv6 hosts can be configured automatically when connected to a routed IPv6 network. When first connected to a network, a host sends a link-local multicast (broadcast) 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.

Multicast

Multicast is part of the base protocol suite in IPv6. This is in opposition to IPv4, where multicast is optional.

Network-layer security

IPsec, the protocol for IP network-layer encryption and authentication, is an integral part of the base protocol suite in IPv6; this is unlike IPv4, where it is optional (but usually implemented). IPsec, however, is not widely deployed except for securing traffic between IPv6 BGP routers.

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