Verified Document

IPV4 Versus IPV6 Term Paper

IPv4 versus IPv6 The explosive growth in the number of devices that are connected to the Internet has placed enormous pressures on the system's infrastructure. The current Internet protocol addressing system is projected to be inadequate to handle the increased number of telecommunications devices that are expected to be in use in the coming years, and engineers have taken steps to accommodate these increases in use through a new protocol known as IPv6.* This paper provides an overview and history of IPv4 and IPv6 and a comparison of the two technologies, followed by a summary of the research in the conclusion.

What is IPv4?

According to IPv4 (2005), "IPv4 is version 4 of the Internet Protocol (IP). It was the first version of the Internet Protocol to be widely deployed, and forms the basis for most of the current Internet"; the IPv4 protocol was first described in Internet Engineering Task Force Request for Comments No. 791, published in September, 1981 (p. 1). Remaining much as it did when it was first developed over 20 years ago, IPv4 has supported the growth of the Internet to its current global proportions (Lee & Stewart, 2005).

B.

IPv4 address shortage. According to Patrick (2001), "Today's Internet is not prepared to handle the billions of devices that will be connected over the next few years. The capacity has been steadily growing and the advent of pervasive optical fiber will likely meet the demand. However, we will soon run out of addresses for all the devices" (p. 86). This address shortage is caused when users connect to the Internet and are assigned a temporary Internet protocol (IP) address; the Internet protocol is foundation...

The IPv4 employs a four-part address for each device, such as 64.252.14.121, for instance (Patrick, 2001). Each component of the IP address can be between 0 and 256. Patrick points out that 256 times 256 times 256 provides in excess of 4 billion globally unique addresses; while that may appear to be sufficient, in reality, the number is considerably smaller because of the inefficient way in which the addresses are allocated. "Even at 4 billion, it is not enough," Patrick says, and "Cell phones alone are projected to be in the billions" (p. 86).
What is IPv6?

A.

History. Most of today's internet uses IPv4, however, because of its growing shortage of IPv4 addresses, the addresses will run out in about year 2008; in an attempt to remedy this shortfall, a new set of protocols was proposed by numerous internet groups such as "CNAT," "Nimrod" and others in 1993 and by 1995, and a basic specification was established (Internet Protocol Version 6, 2004).

B.

Need for IPv6. The new Internet Protocol version 6 ("IPv6") will gradually replace the existing Internet protocol, IPv4. The newly approved version of the IP standard is called IPv6, or IP "next generation" (Patrick, 2001). The new standard has "2 to the 128th power addresses which provides more than 50,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 addresses per person! If you look at it by surface area, it would be approximately 340,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 addresses per square meter of the planet! That should be enough!" (p. 87). The IPv6 standard requires software to include a globally unique identifier GUID in the header of every Internet communication…

Sources used in this document:
References

Anderson, R.H., Botterman, M. & Cave, J. et al. (2003). Enabling the Information Society by Stimulating the Creation of a Broadband Environment in Europe: Analyses of Evolution

Scenarios for Future Networking Technologies and Networks in Europe. Santa Monica,

CA: Rand.

Internet Protocol Version 6. (2004). Laboratory of Networking and Information Systems.
Retrieved January 18, 2005, from http://nislab.bu.edu/sc546/sc441Spring2003/
IPv4. (2005, January 11). Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia. Retrieved January 18, 2005, from http://en.wikipedia.org.
IPv6 (2005, January 17). Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia. Retrieved January 18, 2005, from http://en.wikipedia.org.
Testing. IXIA: White Papers. Retrieved January 18, 2005, from http://www.ixiacom.
Cite this Document:
Copy Bibliography Citation

Related Documents

IPV4 to IPV6 Distinguishing Characteristics
Words: 781 Length: 2 Document Type: Term Paper

Hence more than 200 trillion blocks of a lot many trillions more unique addresses are possible for allocation. This unique advantage equips ISPs, Govts, MNCs and Universities to allocate themselves virtually unlimited address space ushering the sustained growth of the Internet helping online transaction more secure. IPv6 also provides several enhancements to the present Internet experience over its previous avatar which seems impossible within the present IPv4 framework. Embedded

IPV6 in Distributed Virtual Private
Words: 3653 Length: 10 Document Type: Term Paper

Very High - IPSec works at the protocol level, independent of applications, therefore scalability is best-in-class Comparing the technological and operational benefits specifically in the areas of client access options, access control, client-side security, installation, and client configuration highlights just how differentiated the IPv4-based IPSec vs. IPv6 -based SSL protocols are from each other. In analyzing these differences, Table 3: Comparing Technological and Operational benefits of IPv6-based SSL and IPv4-based IPSec

IPV6 Since the Mid-1990's a
Words: 1656 Length: 6 Document Type: Thesis

The dollar cost of accomplishing such a feat far outweighs the potential dollar cost of not doing so. The MoonV6 project has been conducted since October 2002 in testing the IPv6 capabilities and interoperability. The project is being led by the North American IPv6 Task Force and "through a series of test events with willing equipment manufacturers, network operators...and various government agencies... The group has continued to advance the cause

Qos for IPV6 Implementing Quality
Words: 606 Length: 2 Document Type: Article Review

Many enterprise network products vendors including Cisco use the ToS header data to define the Quality of Service (QoS) parameters and options (Bartolini, Casalicchio, 2006). Cisco and others are doing this to increase the performance of QoS implementations on IPv4 and IPv6-based networks. Traffic conditioning, congestion avoidance and congestion management all also must be included on QoS planning for IPV4 versus IPv6 implementations as well. Cisco and IBM are beginning

Windows Vista Overview of the
Words: 3044 Length: 10 Document Type: Term Paper

This translates into the use of system cache as part of the memory allocation algorithms inherent in the VA memory space approach to managing memory in Vista. In addition, memory manager now relies on kernel page tables that are loaded at system initiation and allocated on demand. This saves a significant amount of system resources including a minimum of 1.5MB on Intel x86-based systems and up to 3MB on

Brocade Mlx Routers Marketing Plan
Words: 1407 Length: 5 Document Type: Marketing Plan

Awareness will also be created through social networking websites such as Facebook in order to capture target audience. These social networking websites can also play an effective role in assisting the firm to carry out pre-launch and post launch tracking studies for the effectiveness of the ad campaign. Measuring Effectiveness In order to test the effectiveness of the MLX router's advertising campaign, a market survey would be carried out before formally launching

Sign Up for Unlimited Study Help

Our semester plans gives you unlimited, unrestricted access to our entire library of resources —writing tools, guides, example essays, tutorials, class notes, and more.

Get Started Now