Introduction

First, in order to understand how IP version 6 (IPv6) can solve some of the current and future problems encountered with IP version 4 (IPv4), we must understand the motivation for its inception. This chapter will give a short introduction to the history and development of the IPv6 protocol, through its current accepted form.

Second, we will look at some of the key aspects of IPv6 that separate the protocol from IPv4, and look into the benefits that we can gain by utilizing IPv6 and its addressing schemas to build a more scalable network. From there, we can begin to build real-world examples of how this addressing can be deployed in Internet-connected networks to come.

Finally, we will look into some of IPv6's outstanding issues and its addressing schemes, and some of the proposed solutions to cope with these yet unsolved issues. Also in this section, we will give a brief introduction to the IPv6 test network, the 6Bone.

IPv6 Addressing Basics

By the early 1990s, it was clear that the Internet was going to take off. The average person was becoming aware of its existence, and the killer-apps of today (Web browsers) were coming into their own. This dramatic increase in usage of the Internet, which stemmed from outside the research community, was clearly not going to go away. Address space delegations increased at an alarming rate, and it was clear that the Internet Protocol version 4 had a foreseeable upper limit in terms of the number of...