IPv6: unlimited network space expansion

The Next Generation Internet is the commanding heights of the information society in the future. IPv6 is the foundation and soul of the Next Generation Internet. It will replace the Internet with a simple and efficient engine, which not only solves IPv4 address shortage problems, in addition, the Internet can be freed from increasingly complex, difficult to manage and control, thus making the Internet more stable, reliable, efficient, and secure.

The current Internet Protocol was developed about 30 years ago, with the network layer Protocol IPv4 (Internet Protocol Version 4 ). The IPv4 address space is 32-bit. In theory, 4 billion terminal devices are interconnected. However, due to the division of address types such as A, B, and C, and many other special provisions and uses, the actual number of available addresses is much smaller. Generally, the utilization of the whole address space can only reach about 10%.

In practical applications, IPv4 has achieved great success. However, with the rapid development of the Internet, the shortcomings brought about by poor consideration when designing IPv4 are increasingly exposed, mainly manifested in two aspects: the exhaustion of address space and the rapid expansion of Route tables. These problems have become obstacles to the further development of the Internet, resulting in Classless InterDomain Routing (CIDR) technology and Network Address Translation (NAT) it is widely used. However, these two technologies can only delay the use of IPv4 address space, but cannot fundamentally solve the problem of IPv4 address insufficiency.

IPv6 generation

In order to solve the problems encountered during the development of the Internet, as early as the beginning of 1990s, the IETF of the Internet Engineering Task Group began to work on the next generation Internet Protocol IPng (IP-the next generation. IETF called for a new IP protocol in RFC1550 and announced the main objectives of the new protocol:

◆ Supports almost infinite address space;

◆ Reduce the route table size so that the router can process data packets more quickly;

◆ Provides better security to achieve IP-level security;

◆ Supports multiple service types and multicast;

◆ Supports automatic Address Configuration, allowing the host to achieve remote roaming without changing the address;

◆ Allow new and old protocols to coexist for a period of time;

◆ The protocol must support removable hosts and networks.

After IETF proposed IPng design principles, many proposals for IPng emerged, including a proposal called SIPP (Simple IP Plus, as described by RFC1710. SIPP removes some IPv4 header fields to make the header small and uses a 64-bit address. Unlike IPv4, which uses the option as the basic component of the IP header, SIPP isolates the IP option from the header. The option is placed in the packet after the header and is located before the transport layer protocol header. After this method is used, the router can process the option header only when necessary, which improves the ability to process all data.

In July 1994, IETF decided to use SIPP as the basis for IPng and increased the number of addresses from 64-bit to 128-bit. The new IP protocol is called IPv6, and its version is RFC1752 approved by IETF in 1994. IPv6 experts summarized their early experiences in IPv4 formulation and the development and market demand of the Internet. They believed that the next-generation Internet Protocol should focus on the capacity and performance of the network. IPv6 inherits the advantages of IPv4 and discards the disadvantages of IPv4. IPv6 is incompatible with IPv4, but IPv6 is compatible with all other TCP/IP protocol families. That is, IPv6 can completely replace IPv4.

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