We will now talk about the different versions of IP. What is the IPv4? We have mentioned it a lot through previous lessons. But what is it exactly? IPv4 was the first stable version of the Internet Protocol, the IP. V stands for version, and the first version was 4. The second one, IPv6 was defined in RFC 460. RFC 460 is the newest generation of Internet Protocols (IPs). IETF, or Internet Engineering Task Force defined it first. When something comes out, everyone thinks that the main purpose is to replace something old, right? Well, it may be the case, but this situation is a little bit different. At first place, IPv6 was actually designed with a purpose to replace IPv4 one day, but it seems that they are actually tightly mingled. And the best thing is most of the engineers run them together!
We came to a part two of Network Fundamentals Course! First of all, I would like to congratulate you. It was a long road through the part one. I am sure that you have learned so much and now that you are ready to continue your journey to getting more knowledge! So, I won’t take any more of your time, let’s continue!
We will now take a look at all the benefits of IPv6 and why is it used. Later, we will see how these two IP addresses function together and why are they different. The biggest benefits of using IPv6 are:
1.It has much more efficient routing than IPv4. Also, it doesn’t need fragment packets for it.
2.QoS, or Built-in Quality of Service. What this function does is that it distinguishes the delayed and sensitive packets.
3.NAT elimination. Why is that important? Well, it is actually very important because then we have an extended address space from even 32 to amazing 128 bits.
4.IPsec. IPv6 has an automated network layer security which is built in by default.
5.Easier network administration. Such administration is possible because it has a stateless address auto-configuration.
6.The header structure is improved, and it looks nothing similar to IPv4. It also has less processing overhead.
We will now take a look how these two IPs work. Then, you will realize all the differences, but also, you will be able to see why some people use them together or combined.
1.IPv6 address has 128-bits, and that is actually 16-bit hexadecimal blocks. They are, of course, separated in colons, about which we have already talked about.
2.While IPv6 addresses are divided into colons, IPv4 is divided into classes of A, B, and C. I am sure that you remember those classes very well.
3.IPv4 is always using class-type address space when it comes to multicast use. For example, it may be 224.0.0.0/4., while the IPv6 uses different types of address called integrated ones, and they can be shown on the multicast as FF00::/8.
4.IPv6 uses multiple or multicast groups while IPv4 is always using so-called broadcast addresses.
5.IPv4 pretends to use globally unique public addresses, while IPv6 uses the unicast ones.