Computer Science: Ipv4 to IPv6: Problems Faced in the Migration

IPv6 is developed to replace IPv4 for the reason of IPv4 address exhaustion. Since there is a total of 32 bits in an IPv4 address, it only allows 4 billion unique addresses. On the other hand, the world population has already reached 7 billion in 2011. Ipv4 address space is not enough for everyone in the world to have one unique IP address, let alone each person has more than one devices currently, such as mobile phones, computers, tablets, GPS, and etc. In Ipv6, the address space has been expanded to 128 bits, allowing 340 trillion trillion trillion unique addresses, which solves the limited address space problem. The reason that the new generation of Internet protocol is named as Ipv6 instead of Ipv5 is that Ipv5 has already been defined

With the rapid growth of the Internet after commercialization in the 1990s, it became evident that far more addresses than the IPv4 address space has available were necessary to connect new devices in the future. By 1998, the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) had formalized the successor protocol. IPv6 uses a 128-bit address, allowing 2128, or approximately 3.4×1038 addresses, or more than 7.9×1028 times as many as IPv4, which uses 32-bit addresses and provides approximately 4.3 billion addresses. The two protocols are not designed to beinteroperable, complicating the transition to IPv6. However, several IPv6 transition mechanisms have been devised to permit communication between IPv4 and IPv6

IPv4 address exhaustion- A term referring to the very real problem in the worldwide Internet, which first presented itself in the late 1980s, in which the world appeared to be running out of the available IPv4 address space.

With admirable foresight, the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) initiated as early as in 1994, the design and development of a suite of protocols and standards now known as Internet Protocol Version 6 (IPv6), as a worthy tool to phase out and supplant IPv4 over the coming years. There is an explosion of sorts in the number and range of IP capable devices that are being released in the market and the usage of these by an increasingly tech savvy global population. The new protocol aims to effectively support the ever-expanding Internet usage and functionality, and also address security concerns.

The Internet is, quite literally, a network of networks. It is comprised of ten thousands of interconnected networks spanning the globe. The computers that form the Internet range from huge mainframes in research establishments to modest PCs in people's homes and offices. Despite the recent hype, the Internet is not a new phenomenon. Its roots lie in a collection of computers that were linked together in the 1970s to form the US Department of Defense's communications systems. Fearing the consequences of nuclear attack, there was no central computer holding vast amounts of data, rather the information was dispersed across thousands of machines. A set of rules, of protocols, known as TCP/IP was

IPv6 is not a solution for security, however, in light of the fact that few security issues

15. Which type of IPv6 address is used to create multiple sites within a large organization? ULA Unique Local Address

A typical household should only have 2 IP address no matter the devices. The household can have 1 IP for personal reason i.e. parents and the kids could have the other IP address. That way they just reserved the other IP addresses to other people who need it. This is one way of slowing down the process of IP addresses going extinct or creates another IP address. Rather than allowing the system to go extinct allow another system to come in that offers greater capacity. Allow paid transfers of IP addresses which will better allocate resources to those who need them

Better support for quality of service (QoS) - IPv6 provides better quality of services because new fields in the IPv6 header define how traffic is handled and identified.

The tasks to be performed under the IPv6 project are described in more detail in Section 6.0 Program Management Approach by Task Order. This section provides an outline describing the contractor management approach and Standard Operating Procedures to manage, plan, schedule and implement the following Tasks:

The TCP/IP protocols are the heart and soul of the Internet, and they describe the fundamental rules that govern all communications in the network. The original address system of the Internet is Internet Protocol version 4 (IPv4). The Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) developed IPv6 to deal with the long-anticipated problem of IPv4 address exhaustion. However, IPv6 is not foreseen to supplant IPv4 instantaneously.

The internet matured in the 1970's as a result of the Transmission Control Protocol/Internet Protocol (TCP/IP), which is sill used today. It was adopted by the U.S. Department of Defense in 1980, and universally adopted in 1983. The usage of TCP/IP is what unites all elements of the net. Both public domain and commercial implementations of the roughly one hundred protocols of the TCP/IP protocol suite became available in the 1980's. During the early 1990's, Open Systems Interconnection (OSI) protocol implementations also became available by the end of 1991, the Internet has grown to include some 5,000 networks in over three dozen countries, serving over 700,000 host computers used be over 4,000,000 people. By December 1996, about 627,000 Internet domain names had been registered and now there are more than 30 million registered.

A big yes to IPV6 ,This report will explain my reasoning why I had chosen yes for IPv6 in detail

First a run-down of the internet, the internet is made up of millions of computers all over the world that are digitally connected to each other by cable, fibre or wireless links, in short it is a bunch of networks communicating with one another. You can use the internet to browse websites, communicate with people, download pictures and videos, listen to music or do lots of other amazing things. Every single one of those computers has what is called an IP address, the IP address is the unique set of numbers separated by periods, for example 170.65.240.9, this number set identifies every device connected to the Internet. This IP address is not only for desktop home computers,

IP addresses are the numbers that enable our computers, servers, telephones, cameras, printers and sensors to communicate with each other. Without IP addresses, we would have to copy data from device to device manually, using CDs, DVDs, hard disks or flash storage, such as a USB drive. But more importantly, our devices could not send data to each other without human intervention. Without the IP addresses assigned to our computers, we would have to send paper letters and memos instead of sending emails. There would be no streaming video sites. Instead, we would have to send each other discs and tapes. Worst of all, we would not be able to order items online and would have to go to stores to buy