University of Maryland Global Campus IPv4 and IPv6 Comparison Discussion Response Please respond to the two statements below. 1) IPv4 vs IPv6, FIGHT! But,

University of Maryland Global Campus IPv4 and IPv6 Comparison Discussion Response Please respond to the two statements below.

1) IPv4 vs IPv6, FIGHT! But, wait, I thought the first rule of fight club was don’t talk about fight club? Ah well, guess we really blew that one.

First up, we have the current world champion, IPv4. Some of the key stats for IPv4 are:

Longevity, it was standardized in 1981
32-bit address space (4.3 billion addresses)
Gave rise to the internet and is widely used
Supported as a default for pretty much all infrastructure
Virtually required to use a network address translation (NAT) to expand the usage

The contender is IPv6. The key figures for it are:

Went through 19 years of drafts before ratification in 2017, though it was being used before this
Is not reverse compatible with IPv4
128-bit address space (340 undecillion addresses, that’s 36 more zeros)
No need for a NAT due to extended IP space
Network security layer is built in

IPv4 has an incredible amount of inertia behind it due to the length of time its been around. The protocol is intimately familiar and fairly easy to work with. IPv6, on the other hand, requires completely new hardware and does not easily connect into the existing IPv4 infrastructure. While IPv6 does provide an insane amount address space it also makes it not so user friendly in practice. This is offset by the efficiency, performance, and built-in security of the protocol. If I were a betting man, I would put my money on IPv6 slowly withering away. This is due to the fact that society is moving towards a much more mobile and flexible usage of networks.

However, there are many companies using IPv6, mostly tech companies like Google, Facebook, Microsoft, etc.

2) IPv4 is a protocol for use on packet switched Link Layer Networks. IPv6 is more advanced and has better features than IPv4. IPv6 has the capability to provide an infinite number of addresses. IPv4 uses four 1 byte decimal numbers separated by a dot and IPv6 uses hexadecimal numbers that are separated by colons. The number of bits on an IP address for IPv4 is 32 and 128 for IPv6.

The advantages of IPv6 over IPv4 are:

IPV6 simplified the router’s task compared to IPv4
IPv6 is more compatible to mobile networks than IPv4
IPv6 allows for bigger payloads than what is allowed in IPv4
IPv6 is used by less than 1% of the networks while IPv4 is still in use by the remaining 99%