Weekend Project: Transition to IPv6
May 15, 2010, 19:03 (3 Talkback[s])
(Other stories by Nathan Willis)
"Internet Protocol version 4 (IPv4) has certainly served the
world well over the past few decades, but that's no reason to cling
to it until the bitter end. You can start using its replacement
IPv6 on your Linux machines and home network today.
"If you haven't worked with IPv6 before, you might have only
heard one fact about it: that its expand, 128-bit address space is
so much larger than IPv4's 32-bit space that it will never need to
be expanded again. The curmudgeons may mutter, "never say never" at
that claim, but it is true that the last unreserved IPv4 address
blocks are predicted to be used up by September of 2011, at which
point ISPs and businesses will be forced to start using IPv6 in
order to roll out new networks.
"Still, if you are reading this Weekend Project, then you are
connected to the Internet, so IPv4's address depletion hasn't hit
you yet. But there is a lot more to IPv6 than just its large
address space. IPv6 has built-in IPSec security features that are
optional in IPv4 (and thus, rarely offered to consumers by ISPs),
larger packet payloads called jumbograms that increase network
efficiency, built-in support for mobile networking devices that
move from one connection point to another as they travel,
simplified routing and address autoconfiguration."
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