IPv6 or IPng (IP Next generation) Basic Networking

 I will dicuss about Brief introduction about IPV6

IPv6 is short for "Internet Protocol Version 6". IPv6 is the "next generation" protocol designed by the IETF (The Internet Engineering Task Force) to replace the current version Internet Protocol, IP Version 4 ("IPv4"). The IP v 6 specifications are in rfc2460. 

Most of today's internet uses IPv4, which is now nearly twenty years old. IPv4 has been remarkably resilient in spite of its age, but it is beginning to have problems. Most importantly, there is a growing shortage of IPv4 addresses, which are needed by all new machines added to the Internet. It wil give 3200 IP for each 1meter at whole earth (Include Land and Water).

IPv6 fixes a number of problems in IPv4, such as the limited number of available IPv4 addresses. It also adds many improvements to IPv4 in areas such as routing and network autoconfiguration. IPv6 is expected to gradually replace IPv4, with the two coexisting for a number of years during a transition period.

IPv6 is the long-anticipated upgrade to the Internet's main communications protocol, which is known as IPv4.

IPv4 uses 32-bit addresses and can support 4.3 billion devices connected directly to the Internet. IPv6, on the other hand, uses 128-bit addresses and supports a virtually unlimited number of devices – 2 to the 128th power.

IPv6 Background

The Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF), a standards body, created IPv6 as a replacement to IPv4 in 1998, when it became clear that the Internet would eventually run out of IPv4 addresses.

IPv6's primary goal is to increase the Internet's address space, but the protocol also has some enhancements, including autoconfiguration, easier network renumbering and built-in security through the IPsec protocol.

IPv6 has been slow to gain adoption, but momentum began picking up in 2009. Hurricane Electric and NTT America said their IPv6 traffic doubled in 2009, while Google added IPv6 support to several applications including Search, Docs, Gmail and News.

The push towards IPv6 has continued in 2010, with Comcast and Verizon announcing their first public trials of the protocol.

The U.S. federal government is a proponent of IPv6, setting a mandate of June 2008 for all agencies to demonstrate that their backbone networks are capable of carrying IPv6 traffic. After July 2010, the Federal Acquisition Regulation will be changed to require agencies to purchase only IPv6-capable IT systems.

Experts are urging U.S. network managers to prepare their external facing Web sites to support IPv6 by 2012 or risk upsetting IPv6-enabled visitors with lower-grade connectivity.

As of March 2010, experts said that IPv6 had grown to represent 1% of all Internet traffic.

IPv6 Transition Mechanisms

The Internet engineering community has developed several transition mechanisms that will allow network operators to gradually migrate from IPv4 to IPv6.

One option, called Dual Stack, allows network operators to run IPv4 and IPv6 side-by-side on their networks.

Another option is carrier-grade NAT that would allow multiple customers to share a single, public IPv4 address.
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