Anton’s Blog

As many of you probably know there has been a buzz about the IP’s are running out. We have reached a point where we need more addresses and the need for one address per device in our home is present. Imagine you checking the Internet and have not got an address, that should feel like not getting in to a club where you got free drinks.

IPv4, Internet Protocol version 4 is the current standard of the addresses today, an address looks mainly something like this 195.47.247.104. The IP’s are divided into different subnets, some are “free” (these are the ones you use in your local network). Free addresses are 10.0.0.0 – 10.255.255.255, 172.16.0.0 – 172.31.255.255 and 192.168.0.0 – 192.168.255.255. The rest are divided across the Internet. IPv4 addresses are 4,294,967,296 (2³² ) in numbers, that is a few, yes and then with subnets and network address translation it will be even more but not enough.

IPv6

The rescue is IPv6, there will be about 3.4×10³⁸ (2¹²⁸ ) addresses (approximately 5×10²⁸ per person). The address consists of 8×4 hexadecimal numbers and an address might look like this: 2001:0db8:0000:0000:0000:0000:1428:57ab, the address can also be shorted down to look like 2001:db8::1428:57ab. A bunch of routers and servers are supporting IPv6 and it could be implemented in a few years. IPv6 offer benefits like greater addressing space, built-in QoS and better performance in routing.

More Information on the anatomy of the IPv6 address

For all who have worked with networks know about the headers of an Ethernet frame, a magnificent change from IPv4 is the simplification of it. Some header fields have been dropped or made optional, this is to increase the speed of processing packets. Support for extensions is also implemented to make IPv6 more customizable in the future.

This was a short introduction of IPv6 which I know we will see more of in the future, I am very excited to see the development of this network layer protocol and it will be interesting!