IPv6 was designed by IETF to replace IPv4 due to the exponentially growing number of internet users. IPv6 uses 128-bit addresses compared to IPv4's 32-bit addresses, providing trillions more available addresses to meet future demand. IPv6 protocols were upgraded from IPv4, such as OSPF becoming OSPF3 and ARP being replaced by NDP. IPv6 addresses can be written in abbreviated or unabbreviated hexadecimal format, and use prefix lengths to identify the network portion similar to IPv4 subnet masks.

1. PRESENTED BY:
INIYAN V
Fundamentals of
IPv6

2. What is IPv6
IPv6 or Internet Protocol v6 is a network layer protocol that
allows communication to take place over the network. IPv6
was designed by Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) in
December 1998 with the purpose of superseding the IPv4 due
to the global exponentially growing internet users.

3. Why IPv6?
The traditional IPv4 consists of 32 bits, which totals a
few billion addresses. Even as the number seems to be
large, it is not sufficient. So, to meet the increasing
demands of IP addresses, IPv6 was created with 128 bits
which is some billion times more than IPv4.

4. HISTORY behind IPv6
1980 - IPv4 RFC 791
1990 - Concerns on exhaustion of IPv4
Introduction of NAT, CIDR
1998 - IPv6 RFCs
2010 - IANA allocates /8 block
20?? - IPv6 full implementation

5. IPv6 ADDRESSING
An IPv6 address consists of 128 bits.
It is denoted in 32 hexadecimal digits with each digit
denoting 4 bits.
Eg: 3001:0da8:75a3:0000:0000:8a2e:0370:7334
The Subnet ID is also denoted along the address with a /

7. IPv6 HEADER

8. IPv6 PROTOCOLS
OSPF v2 - upgraded to OSPF v3 to support IPv6. Currently, OSPF 3
is also supporting IPv4.
ICMP is upgraded to support IPv6 - currently, it is ICMPv6
ARP is completely replaced with NDP (Neighbor Discovery
Protocol) to discover MAC addresses and many more functions.
IPv6 does not support Broadcast. So, any protocols that work with
Broadcast technology (like ARP) are being replaced to updated.

9. IPv6 ADDRESSING FORMATS
UNABBRIVATED REPRESENTATION:
Hexadecimal representation with 8 sets of 4 hex digits, each separated by a colon
Eg: 2340:1111:AAAA:0001:1234:5678:9ABC:1234
.
ABBRIVATED REPRESENTATION:
If the quartet has 3 leading 0's, it can be represented with only the 4th digit.
If all the digits of the consecutive quartets are 0, it can be replaced by::. But only one:: can
be used in a single address.
Eg: FE00:0000:0000:0001:0000:0000:0056
FE00:0:0:1::56
.

10. PREFIX LENGTH of an address:
Similar to IPv4's subnet masks, IPv6 used prefix length. The prefix length is written
along with the address with a / following a decimal number. The prefix length
determines how many bits of the IPv6 address define the IPv6 prefix, which is the same
concept as the IPv4 subnet ID.
Eg: 2222:1111:0:1:A:B:C:D/64
The prefix length is the number of bits and hence has a range of 0 to 128

11. CALCULATING PREFIX

12. Identify the number of hex digits in the prefix by dividing the prefix
length by 4. If the prefix length is 64, take the first 16 digits and convert
the rest of the address into 0
As the number of digits made 0 is 16 with equates to 64 bits, the prefix
length is 128(full address) - host portion = 64 -> /64

13. FUN FACT
WHY NO IPv5?
There was an earlier effort to create a new version of IP after IPv4
and it was numbered IPv5, but it did not progress to the standard
stage. So the development of IPv5 has been terminated and a new
version named IPv6 was developed, which proved to be successful.