IPv6

Internet Protocol version 6
Protocol stack
IPv6 header
AbbreviationIPv6
PurposeInternetworking protocol
Developer(s)Internet Engineering Task Force
IntroductionDecember 1995 (1995-12)
Based onIPv4
OSI layerNetwork layer
RFC(s)2460, 8200
Internet protocol suite
Application layer
Transport layer
Internet layer
Link layer
Internet history timeline

Early research and development:

  • 1960–1962: J. C. R. Licklider networking ideas
  • 1960–1964: RAND networking concepts developed
  • 1962–1964: ARPA networking ideas
  • 1965 (1965): NPL network concepts conceived
  • 1966 (1966): Merit Network founded
  • 1967 (1967): ARPANET planning begins
  • 1967 (1967): Symposium on Operating Systems Principles
  • 1969 (1969): NPL followed by the ARPANET carry their first packets
  • 1970 (1970): Network Information Center (NIC)
  • 1971 (1971): Tymnet switched-circuit network
  • 1972 (1972): Merit Network's packet-switched network operational
  • 1972 (1972): Internet Assigned Numbers Authority (IANA) established
  • 1973 (1973): CYCLADES network demonstrated
  • 1973 (1973): PARC Universal Packet development begins
  • 1974 (1974): Transmission Control Program specification published
  • 1975 (1975): Telenet commercial packet-switched network
  • 1976 (1976): X.25 protocol approved and deployed on public data networks
  • 1978 (1978): Minitel introduced
  • 1979 (1979): Internet Activities Board (IAB)
  • 1980 (1980): USENET news using UUCP
  • 1980 (1980): Ethernet standard introduced
  • 1981 (1981): BITNET established

Merging the networks and creating the Internet:

  • 1981 (1981): Computer Science Network (CSNET)
  • 1982 (1982): TCP/IP protocol suite formalized
  • 1982 (1982): Simple Mail Transfer Protocol (SMTP)
  • 1983 (1983): Domain Name System (DNS)
  • 1983 (1983): MILNET split off from ARPANET
  • 1984 (1984): OSI Reference Model released
  • 1985 (1985): First .COM domain name registered
  • 1986 (1986): NSFNET with 56 kbit/s links
  • 1986 (1986): Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF)
  • 1987 (1987): UUNET founded
  • 1988 (1988): NSFNET upgraded to 1.5 Mbit/s (T1)
  • 1988 (1988): Morris worm
  • 1988 (1988): Complete Internet protocol suite
  • 1989 (1989): Border Gateway Protocol (BGP)
  • 1989 (1989): PSINet founded, allows commercial traffic
  • 1989 (1989): Federal Internet Exchanges (FIX East|FIXes)
  • 1990 (1990): GOSIP (without TCP/IP)
  • 1990 (1990): ARPANET decommissioned
  • 1990 (1990): Advanced Network and Services (ANS)
  • 1990 (1990): UUNET/Alternet allows commercial traffic
  • 1990 (1990): Archie search engine
  • 1991 (1991): Wide area information server (WAIS)
  • 1991 (1991): Gopher
  • 1991 (1991): Commercial Internet eXchange (CIX)
  • 1991 (1991): ANS CO+RE allows commercial traffic
  • 1991 (1991): World Wide Web (WWW)
  • 1992 (1992): NSFNET upgraded to 45 Mbit/s (T3)
  • 1992 (1992): Internet Society (ISOC) established
  • 1993 (1993): Classless Inter-Domain Routing (CIDR)
  • 1993 (1993): InterNIC established
  • 1993 (1993): AOL added USENET access
  • 1993 (1993): Mosaic web browser released
  • 1994 (1994): Full text web search engines
  • 1994 (1994): North American Network Operators' Group (NANOG) established

Commercialization, privatization, broader access leads to the modern Internet:

  • 1995 (1995): New Internet architecture with commercial ISPs connected at NAPs
  • 1995 (1995): NSFNET decommissioned
  • 1995 (1995): GOSIP updated to allow TCP/IP
  • 1995 (1995): very high-speed Backbone Network Service (vBNS)
  • 1995 (1995): proposed
  • 1996 (1996): AOL changes pricing model from hourly to monthly
  • 1998 (1998): Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN)
  • 1999 (1999): IEEE 802.11b wireless networking
  • 1999 (1999): Internet2/Abilene Network
  • 1999 (1999): vBNS+ allows broader access
  • 2000 (2000): Dot-com bubble bursts
  • 2001 (2001): New top-level domain names activated
  • 2001 (2001): Code Red I, Code Red II, and Nimda worms
  • 2003 (2003): UN World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS) phase I

Examples of Internet services:

Internet Protocol version 6 (IPv6) is the most recent version of the Internet Protocol (IP), the communications protocol that provides an identification and location system for computers on networks and routes traffic across the Internet. IPv6 was developed by the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) to deal with the long-anticipated problem of IPv4 address exhaustion, and was intended to replace IPv4.[1] In December 1998, IPv6 became a Draft Standard for the IETF,[2] which subsequently ratified it as an Internet Standard on 14 July 2017.[3][4]

Devices on the Internet are assigned a unique IP address for identification and location definition. With the rapid growth of the Internet after commercialization in the 1990s, it became evident that far more addresses would be needed to connect devices than the 4,294,967,296 (232) IPv4 address space had available. By 1998, the IETF had formalized the successor protocol, IPv6 which uses 128-bit addresses, theoretically allowing 2128, or 340,282,366,920,938,463,463,374,607,431,768,211,456 total addresses. The actual number is slightly smaller, as multiple ranges are reserved for special usage or completely excluded from general use. The two protocols are not designed to be interoperable, and thus direct communication between them is impossible, complicating the move to IPv6. However, several transition mechanisms have been devised to rectify this.

IPv6 provides other technical benefits in addition to a larger addressing space. In particular, it permits hierarchical address allocation methods that facilitate route aggregation across the Internet, and thus limit the expansion of routing tables. The use of multicast addressing is expanded and simplified, and provides additional optimization for the delivery of services. Device mobility, security, and configuration aspects have been considered in the design of the protocol.

IPv6 addresses are represented as eight groups of four hexadecimal digits each, separated by colons. The full representation may be shortened; for example, 2001:0db8:0000:0000:0000:8a2e:0370:7334 becomes 2001:db8::8a2e:370:7334.

  1. ^ "FAQs". New Zealand IPv6 Task Force. Archived from the original on 29 January 2019. Retrieved 26 October 2015.
  2. ^ Cite error: The named reference rfc2460 was invoked but never defined (see the help page).
  3. ^ Cite error: The named reference rfc8200 was invoked but never defined (see the help page).
  4. ^ Siddiqui, Aftab (17 July 2017). "RFC 8200 – IPv6 Has Been Standardized". Internet Society. Archived from the original on 23 October 2023. Retrieved 25 February 2018.
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