Internet Protocol 4 (IPv4) vs Internet Protocol 6 (IPv6) - Essay Example

Answer

Internet Protocol 4 (IPv6) versus Internet Protocol 6 (IPv6)

At the moment, IPv4 fails to have the capacity to sustain the increasing the demand for internet Protocol addresses. The addressing system of IPv4 is a 32-bit which accommodates only four billion varied addressed devices. As such, this ever-rising demand for IP addresses led to research work into developing a new IP address scheme with large capacity of address space and/or that is capable of excluding quite a number of internet devices from public addressing. In comparing with IPv4, Ipv6 make use of 128-bit address scheme whereas IPv4 utilizes 32-bit address scheme. Therefore, according to Bradner and Mankin (1995), IPv6 address space serves 2128 (3.4 * 1038) addresses and hence it is capable of being flexible in respect to traffic routing and address location.

Subsequently, IPv6 has a large address space capacity that does away with the need to use Network Address Translation (NAT) which is used in controlling particular internet devices from public address system. According to Ammos and Minoli (2007), NAT is commonly used in IPv4 in counterbalancing the small address space problem. It is in the early 199-s that Internet Engineering Taskforce (IETF) initiated the development of IPv6 protocol in the ‘Requests fro comments’ document. At the onset, a number of proposals were made but it is in 1998 that IPv6 was completely described in a RFC2460 document by the IETF (Blanchet, 2005). in regard to features, IPv6 is more advanced and it is nowadays being referred to as the of next generation Internet protocol based on the fact that it has more enhanced extensibility and scalability, convergence, mobility and security among others.

Benefits and Features of IPv6

The fact that IPv6 has 128-bit address space enable sit to provide sufficient and unique IP addresses fro both the network users and websites across the world. 12-bit address comprises of eight sets of addresses written in four hexadecimal characters as explained in RCF2732 document (Ibid, 2006). Besides, the big address space abolishes the scarcity of IP addresses and the use of NAT. Subsequently, this reduces complexity of software and hardware to be used within the network as well as it simplifies configuration of the entire network. Furthermore, IPv6 provides a hierarchical form of address allocation fro both end site sand ISPs (Ammos & Minoli, 2007). Hence, IPv6 considerably reduces the number of network routes within the backbone routers of internet-default free zone.

Consequently, IPv6 makes it possible to have resourceful routing service among devices within any network based on the reason that its header is more streamlined. Therefore, routing nodes deo not calculate network-layer checksum as well as resembling data packets through headers. This leads to reduced hardware complexity and router processing besides a more versatile processing of data packets. In hid work, Blanchet (2005), argues that IPv6’s hierarchical address system facilitates enough allocation of address spaces hence resulting into smaller routing tables as well as more enhanced routing within the whole network.

In another aspect, IPv6 facilitates mobility and multicast improvement. In IPv6, multicast is efficient because of its capacity to maintain Source-Specific Multicast (SSM) and besides, it consists of Embedded RP which eliminates the requirement for inter-Rendezvous Point protocols utilized in communication (Ammos & Minoli, 2007). Hence, this enhances the framework of multicast traffic. According to Ammos and Minoli (2007), SSM combines applications to form a channel (a pair of G and S consisting of source address, S, and multicast group address, G), hence after receiving some data, every application identifies both its source in totality as well the source-address (Ibid, 2006).

Differences between IPv4 and IPv6

In comparing between Ipv4 and Ipv6, the latter has distinct header that is well streamlined and it also has few number of fields and a fixed packet size base. Besides, IPv6 has an additional ‘flow label’ that eliminates header checksum. In another aspect, IPv6 is capable of eliminating hop-by-hp packet fragmentation according to (Opus1, 2011). This means that Ipv66 uses extension headers in order to manage end to end fragments which lead to having a lean fragmentation. Furthermore, under fragmentation, IPv4 sustains 576-bytes packet size whilst IPv6 supports 1280-byets packet size under fragmentation. Whereas in IPv4 the destination and source addresses are 32-bits in length, IPv6 source and destination addresses are 128 bits in length. Hence, according to Ammos and Minoli (2007), this distinct feature offers a lot of advantages to IPv6 over IPv4. Although, the header of IPv4 is twice as small that of IPv6, it is only capable of handling IP addresses six times less as compared to that of IPv6. It is worth noting that IPv4’s header consists of options and a checksum but it fails to have the ability to identify data packet flow in order for the router to handle Quality of Service. In comparison, IPv6, address header is capable of handling alternative data via extension headers. Although, this occurs without any checksum, IPv6 headers have ‘Flow Label Field’ with capacity to discover packet flow in order for the router to handle Quality of Service (Opus1, 2011). IPv6 routers are therefore capable of identifying and handling specific data flow packets that forms a series of packets between the source and destination. Thus, IPv6 is capable of supporting quality of service unlike Ipv4 even in instances where IPSec is involved in encrypting the data packet payload.

In IPv6, the new format of header facilitates reduction of header overhead. This is achieved via extension headers that accommodate both non-essential and optional fields hence facilitating header streamlining which enables effective processing via intermediate routes. On the other hand, considering that IPv4 lacks extensibility, the extension header added into IPv6 header is a significant feature that enables iPv6 to accommodate large size of IP addresses (Opus1, 2011). Furthermore, IPv4 headers consist of options that only support limited 40bytes options. Conversely, on comparison basis, IPv6 only a limitation in packet size given that optional data is handle within the extension headers.

Implementation of IPv6

Although majority of internet sites and computer networks are utilizing IPv4, key players in the ICT industry such as Google are championing fro the adoption of IPv6. In the recent past, Google has made its intentions clear that it is time of the adoption of IPv6 in order to bring about network democratization (Shankland, 2009). Considering the fact that Google has enormous among of data traffic over the internet, it can be argued as the main reason why the company is pushing for adoption of IPv6. To set the pace fro others, since March 2008, Google has provisioned some of its services and products in IPv6 and lately it extended this to Google Maps. Additionally, other products in which Google is continuing to offer in IPv6 platform are for instance Calendar, Alerts, Docs, Gmail, iGoogle, Notebook, Health, Sites and Reader (Shankland, 2009). Subsequently, the company has continued to show a lot of support for adoption of Ipv6by organizing and funding Ipv6 conferences in order to persuade other key players such as Cisco, Beijing Internet Institute, Microsoft and Yahoo among others to implement IPv6. To demonstrate the suitability of IPv6, Shankland (2009), quotes Google to have reported that its network traffic increased three times overnight after it implemented IPv6. According to Shakland (2009), statistics show that currently Google has over 150, 000 individuals who are using its services via IPv6 platform. Furthermore, according to the author writes that Google believes that Ipv6 is vital for long-term openness and health of the internet. On the other hand, facilitating network devices within a network to communicate to each other, IPv6 enables innovation and enables continued growth of the internet (Ibid, 2009). Hence, it is clear that Google is seriously committed to in overseeing adoption of IPv6.

In conclusion, it is clear that Ipv6 is more robust compared to IPv4 and it offers a lot of benefits for instance reduced administration costs brought about by the auto-configuration and hierarchical addressing, is the next generation Internet protocol as it facilitates peer-to-peer and does away with NAT, has improved security framework, and it also save son investments in that it offers easy translation and transition suite of protocols.