IPv6 Will Solve IP Address Issues
The world is running out of IP addresses – at least out of the IPv4 addresses that IT admins and users are most familiar with. However, the development of IPv6 is expected to exponentially expand the pool of available IP addresses while also providing a few other benefits.
The Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) has recently introduced IPv6, also known as Internet Protocol version 6. It uses 128-bit addresses instead of current 32-bit addresses which gives an exponential increase in the number of available IP addresses. With 32-bits, IPv4 only yields about 4.3 billion IP addresses.
Because every Web-connected device – server, desktop, notebook, smartphone, tablet PC and more – must have an IP address and because the web has significantly expanded in countries like China and India, the world is rapidly running out of IPv4 addresses!
IPv6 is capable of a tremendous number of IP addresses far beyond the demands of today's Internet and web-connected devices. IPv6 has enough addresses to allow each person on the planet to have billions upon billions assigned to them personally.
With 128-bits to use for creating unique addresses, IPv6 is capable of an insane number of IP addresses far exceeding the demands of today’s Internet and Web connected devices. Rather than 4.3 billion address limitation of IPv4, IPv6 has enough addresses that every single person on the planet could have billions upon billions assigned to them personally.
IPv6 was designed with encryption and authentication in mind. IPsec is an optional security component of IPv4, but in IPv6 it is mandatory. With IPsec each individual data packet is encrypted and authenticated, making many of the malicious attacks plaguing the Internet today impossible–or at least substantially more difficult.