IP Version 6 (IPv6)

IPv6 or Internet Protocol Version 6 is the next generation protocol for the Internet. It's designed to provide several advantages over current Internet Protocol Version 4 (or IPv4).

To deal with scaling problems caused by the Internet’s massive growth. Subnetting and CIDR have helped to contain the rate at which the Internet address space is being consumed (the address depletion problem) and have also helped to control the growth of routing table information needed in the Internet’s routers (the routing information problem). However, there will come a point at which these techniques are no longer adequate.

It is virtually impossible to achieve 100% address utilization efficiency, so the address space will be exhausted well before the four-billionth host is connected to the Internet.

Pv6 addresses the main problem of IPv4, that is, the exhaustion of addresses to connect computers or host in a packet-switched network. IPv6 has a very large address space and consists of 128 bits as compared to 32 bits in IPv4.

Therefore, it is now possible to support 2^128 unique IP addresses, a substantial increase in number of computers that can be addressed with the help of IPv6 addressing scheme.

IETF started work on a new version of IP, one which would never run out of addresses, would solve a variety of other problems, and be more flexible and efficient as well. 

Its major goals were:

1. Support billions of hosts, even with inefficient address space allocation.
2. Reduce the size of the routing tables. 
3. Simplify the protocol, to allow routers to process packets faster.
4. Provide better security (authentication and privacy) than current IP.
5. Pay more attention to type of service, particularly for real-time data.
6. Aid multicasting by allowing scopes to be specified.
7. Make it possible for a host to roam without changing its address.
8. Allow the protocol to evolve in the future.
9. Permit the old and new protocols to coexist for years.

To develop a protocol that met all these requirements, IETF issued a call for proposals and discussion in RFC 1550. Twenty-one responses were received, not all of them full proposals. By December 1992, seven serious proposals were on the table. They ranged from making minor patches to IP, to throwing it out altogether and replacing with a completely different protocol.

One proposal was to run TCP over CLNP, which, with its 160-bit addresses would have provided enough address space forever and would have unified two major network layer protocols. However, many people felt that this would have been an admission that something in the OSI world was actually done right, a statement considered Politically Incorrect in Internet circles. CLNP was patterned closely on IP, so the two are not really that different. In fact, the protocol ultimately chosen differs from IP far more than CLNP does. Another strike against CLNP was its poor support for service types, something required to transmit multimedia efficiently.
 

Three of the better proposals were published in IEEE Network (Deering, 1993; Francis, 1993; and Katz and Ford, 1993). After much discussion, revision, and jockeying for position, a modified combined version of the Deering and Francis proposals, by now called SIPP (Simple Internet Protocol Plus) was selected and given the designation IPv6.

First and foremost, IPv6 has longer addresses than IPv4. They are 16 bytes long, which solves the problem that IPv6 set out to solve: provide an effectively unlimited supply of Internet addresses. We will have more to say about addresses shortly.

The second major improvement of IPv6 is the simplification of the header. It contains only seven fields (versus 13 in IPv4). This change allows routers to process packets faster and thus improve throughput and delay.

The third major improvement was better support for options. This change was essential with the new header because fields that previously were required are now optional. In addition, the way options are represented is different, making it simple for routers to skip over options not intended for them. This feature speeds up packet processing time.

A fourth area in which IPv6 represents a big advance is in security. IETF had its fill of newspaper stories about precocious 12-year-olds using their personal computers to break into banks and military bases all over the Internet. There was a strong feeling that something had to be done to improve security. Authentication and privacy are key features of the new IP. These were later retrofitted to IPv4, however, so in the area of security the differences are not so great any more.

Finally, more attention has been paid to quality of service. Various half-hearted efforts have been made in the past, but now with the growth of multimedia on the Internet, the sense of urgency is greater.

Version: The 4-bit version field contains the number 6. It indicates the version of the IPv6 protocol.

Traffic Class: The Traffic class field is used to distinguish between packets with different real-time delivery requirements. A field designed for this purpose has been in IP since the beginning, but it has been only sporadically implemented by routers. 

Flow Label/QoS management (20 bits): The 20-bit flow label field in the IPv6 header can be used by a source to label a set of packets belonging to the same flow. A flow is uniquely identified by the combination of the source address and of a non-zero Flow label. Multiple active flows may exist from a source to a destination as well as traffic that are not associated with any flow (Flow label = 0).

Payload length: The Payload length field tells how many bytes follow the 40-byte header

Next Header (8 bits): The 8-bit Next Header field identifies the type of header immediately following the IPv6 header and located at the beginning of the data field (payload) of the IPv6 packet. This field usually specifies the transport layer protocol used by a packet's payload. The two most common kinds of Next Headers are TCP (6) and UDP (17), but many other headers are also possible. 

Time To Live (TTL)/Hop Limit (8 bits):  The 8-bit Hop Limit field is decremented by one, by each node (typically a router) that forwards a packet. If the Hop Limit field is decremented to zero, the packet is discarded. 

A new notation has been devised for writing 16-byte addresses. They are written as eight groups of four hexadecimal digits with colons between the groups, like this:

8000:0000:0000:0000:0123:4567:89AB:CDEF

Since many addresses will have many zeros inside them, three optimizations have been authorized. First, leading zeros within a group can be omitted, so 0123 can be written as 123. Second, one or more groups of 16 zero bits can be replaced by a pair of colons. Thus, the above address now becomes

8000::123:4567:89AB:CDEF

Finally, IPv4 addresses can be written as a pair of colons and an old dotted decimal number, for example

::192.31.20.46

Extension Headers

Some of the missing IPv4 fields are occasionally still needed, so IPv6 has introduced the concept of an (optional) extension header. These headers can be supplied to provide extra information, but encoded in an efficient way. Six kinds of extension headers are defined at present. Each one is optional, but if more than one is present, they must appear directly after the fixed header, and preferably in the order listed.