Term Paper

On
IPv6
Of
Web Administration

Submitted To: Submitted By:

Mr Anupinder Singh Rishav Soni
Roll No. RC1601A15
Reg. No. 3050060086

Lovely Professional University

Jalandhar-Ludhiana G.T.Road, Near Chaheru Railway Bridge
Phagwara,Punjab(India)-144402
Website: www.lpu.in
IPv6
IPv6 is short for "Internet Protocol Version 6". IPv6 is the "next generation" protocol
designed by the IETF to replace the current version Internet Protocol, IP Version 4 ("IPv4").

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.

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 auto
configuration. IPv6 is expected to gradually replace IPv4, with the two coexisting for a
number of years during a transition period.

History of IPv6

Background
The current version of the Internet Protocol IPv4 was first developed in the 1970s, and the
main protocol standard RFC 791 that governs IPv4 functionality was published in 1981

A brief recap of the major events in the development of the new protocol is given below:

• Basic protocol (RFC 2460) published in 1998

• Basic socket API (RFC 2553) and DHCPv6 (RFC 3315) published in 2003.

• Mobile IPv6 (RFC 3775) published in 2004

• Flow label specifications (RFC 3697) added 2004

• Address architecture (RFC 4291) stable, minor revision in 2006

• Node requirements (RFC 4294) published 2006

Timeline
IPv6 deployment is gaining speed as IPv6 infrastructure is being installed throughout the
Internet backbone and the major wide-area networks. Tier-1 Internet backbone networks run
by AOL Transit Data Network, AT&T, Global Crossing, Level 3, MCI, NTT (Verio), Sprint
Nextel, Qwest, SAVVIS, VSNL-Teleglobe, Telesonera, France Telecom, Telefonica have
already tested and deployed using IPv6.

IPv6 Features
The massive proliferation of devices, need for newer and more demanding applications on a
global level and the increasing role of networks in the way business is conducted are some of
the pressing issues the IPv6 protocol seeks to cater to. The following are the features of the
IPv6 protocol

• New header format designed to keep header overhead to a minimum - achieved by

moving both non-essential fields and optional fields to extension headers that are
placed after the IPv6 header. The streamlined IPv6 header is more efficiently
processed at intermediate routers.

• Large address space - IPv6 has 128-bit (16-byte) source and destination IP addresses.
The large address space of IPv6 has been designed to allow for multiple levels of
subnetting and address allocation from the Internet backbone to the individual subnets
within an organization. Obviates the need for address-conservation techniques such as
the deployment of NATs.

• Efficient and hierarchical addressing and routing infrastructure- based on the common
occurrence of multiple levels of Internet service providers.
 • Stateless and stateful address configuration both in the absence or presence of a
DHCP server. Hosts on a link automatically configure themselves with link-local
addresses and communicate without manual configuration.

• Built-in security: Compliance with IPSec [10] is mandatory in IPv6, and IPSec is
actually a part of the IPv6 protocol. IPv6 provides header extensions that ease the
implementation of encryption, authentication, and Virtual Private Networks (VPNs).
IPSec functionality is basically identical in IPv6 and IPv4, but one benefit of IPv6 is
that IPSec can be utilized along the entire route, from source to destination.

• Better support for prioritized delivery thanks to the Flow Label field in the IPv6
header

• New protocol for neighboring node interaction- The Neighbor Discovery protocol for
IPv6 replaces the broadcast-based Address Resolution Protocol (ARP), ICMPv4
Router Discovery, and ICMPv4 Redirect messages with efficient multicast and
unicast Neighbor Discovery messages.

• Extensibility- IPv6 can easily be extended for new features by adding extension
headers after the IPv6 header

Differences from IPv4

Larger address space

The most important feature of IPv6 is a much larger address space than that of IPv4:
addresses in IPv6 are 128 bits long, compared to 32-bit addresses in IPv4.

The very large IPv6 address space supports a total of 2128 (about 3.4×1038) addresses—or
approximately 5×1028 (roughly 295) addresses for each of the roughly 6.5 billion (6.5×109)
people alive in 2006. In another perspective, this is the same number of IP addresses per
person as the number of atoms in a metric ton of carbon.

The size of a subnet in IPv6 is 264 addresses (64-bit subnet mask), the square of the size of
the entire IPv4 Internet. Thus, actual address space utilization rates will likely be small in
IPv6, but network management and routing will be more efficient because of the inherent
design decisions of large subnet space and hierarchical route aggregation.
Stateless address autoconfiguration
IPv6 hosts can configure themselves automatically when connected to a routed IPv6 network
using ICMPv6 router discovery messages. When first connected to a network, a host sends
alink-local multicast router solicitation request for its configuration parameters; if configured
suitably, routers respond to such a request with a router advertisement packet that contains
network-layer configuration parameters.

If IPv6 stateless address autoconfiguration is unsuitable for an application, a network may use
stateful configuration with the Dynamic Host Configuration Protocol for IPv6 (DHCPv6) or
hosts may be configured statically.

Multicast
Multicast, the ability to send a single packet to multiple destinations, is part of the base
specification in IPv6. This is unlike IPv4, where it is optional (although usually
implemented).

IPv6 does not implement broadcast, which is the ability to send a packet to all hosts on the
attached link. The same effect can be achieved by sending a packet to the link-local all
hostsmulticast group. It therefore lacks the notion of a broadcast address—the highest address
in a subnet (the broadcast address for that subnet in IPv4) is considered a normal address in
IPv6. Most environments, however, do not currently have their network infrastructures
configured to route multicast packets; multicasting on a single subnet will work, but global
multicasting might not.

IPv6 multicast shares common features and protocols with IPv4 multicast, but also provides
changes and improvements. When even the smallest IPv6 global routing prefix is assigned to
an organization, the organization is also assigned the use of 4.2 billion globally routable
source-specific IPv6 multicast groups to assign for inner-domain or cross-domain multicast
applications [RFC 3306]. In IPv4 it was very difficult for an organization to get even one
globally routable cross-domain multicast group assignment and implementation of cross-
domain solutions was very arcane [RFC 2908]. IPv6 also supports new multicast solutions,
including Embedded Rendezvous Point [RFC 3956] which simplifies the deployment of cross
domain solutions
Mobility
Unlike mobile IPv4, Mobile IPv6 (MIPv6) avoids triangular routing and is therefore as
efficient as normal IPv6. IPv6 routers may also support Network Mobility (NEMO) [RFC
3963] which allows entire subnets to move to a new router connection point without
renumbering. However, since neither MIPv6 nor MIPv4 or NEMO are widely deployed
today, this advantage is mostly theoretical.

Jumbograms
IPv4 limits packets to 65535 (216 - 1) octets of payload. IPv6 has optional support for packets
over this limit, referred to as jumbograms, which can be as large as 4294967295 (232 - 1)
octets. The use of jumbograms may improve performance over high-MTU links. The use of
jumbograms is indicated by the Jumbo Payload Option header.

Options extensibility
IPv4 has a fixed size (40 octets) of option parameters. In IPv6, options are implemented as
additional extension headers after the IPv6 header, which limits their size only by the size of
an entire packet. The extension header mechanism allows IPv6 to be easily 'extended' to
support future services for QoS, security, mobility, etc. without a redesign of the basic
protocol.

RFC Links
Communication between computers on the Internet is made possible through the exchange of
packets of digital information in a system dictated by Internet Protocols. The specifications
for standard Internet Protocols are recorded in the form of a Request For Comments (RFC)
document.

There exist eight higher level protocols above the Internet Protocol, which provide additional
functionality to different applications. The nine fundamental Internet protocols are referred to
by their own acronyms, and are described by the respective RFC's:
Pv6 has a number of technical features making it feasible to support a range of next-
generation network applications and services. It is also equipped with extension headers that
will make it easy to integrate future features and services without having to rewrite the
protocol. Some of the important standards for specification of these features and functionality
are given below:

• RFC 2463: Internet Control Message Protocol for IPv6 (ICMPv6)

• RFC 4291, 4193: New Address Types: New addressing options for link local,
anycast, intra-domain3, and globally unique Internet communications.

• RFC 3041, 3972: Security Addressing: New security addressing options for randomly
generated addresses to protect privacy and cryptographically generated addresses used
to sign and authenticate messages.