IPv6-101: Whats new in IPv6?

It's been coming for some time now. We are hearing about IPv6 since ages, but for every IP crunch, some or the other technology has extended the life of IPv4 (the last and very important) like local IPs and NATs. Beijing Olympic 2008 was IPv6 compatible, Cisco wants to make its all networking equipments IPv6 enabled, Google is on IPv6 and US DoD has made it compulsory to support IPv6 for every new deal... looks like we have to learn about IPv6 sooner rather than later.

The version of IP currently being used on the internet is IPv4 and is around for 20 years. IPv4 is remarkably resilient in spite of its age, but it is beginning to have problems. The most serious problem with IPv4 is shortage of IP address space for internet growth. IPv6 has much larger address space than IPv4. IPv6 uses 128bit address as compared to just 32bit address space used by IPv4. The new address space thus supports 2128 addresses. This expansion eliminates NATing, gives flexibility in allocating addresses and routing. The other important features implemented by IPv6 include stateless auto-configuration, network renumbering with router announcements, standard subnet size, mandatory security at network layer etc. As of now IPv6 is implemented on all major operating systems in use in commercial, business, and home consumer environments.

This video is about important features of IPv6. It starts with, how to check that your computer is IPv6 enabled or not and then discusses the main features like

- Extended address space
- Auto-Configuration
- Simplified header formats
- Improved support for options and extensions
- Security at internet layer
- Better routing decisions etc.


You can also view the video from SecurityTube


Note:
Thanks networkwiz for sharing his IPv6-101 video series. It will start with the basic introduction to IPv6 protocol. This video series will serve as a IPv6 tutorial for beginners and will help as a quick reference for advanced users. I will try to add more and more practical examples and real life scenarios in IPv6 tutorial video series along with the theoretical explanation