Microsoft® Windows Server 2003: Administrator’s Companion

IP Version 6

As pointed out earlier, the explosive growth of the Internet has pushed it to the limits of the original design. The number of IP addresses has grown almost exponentially in recent years, leading to the fear that there will soon not be enough addresses to connect all the devices and computers that people want to connect. If that weren’t bad enough, routers are being overloaded by the increasing inadequacy of the IPv4 standard.

To find a solution to the limitations of the 32-bit address space and the limits to the routing protocols in the current structure of TCP/IP, the IETF and others began working on a new version of IP several years ago. Different working groups originally proposed different solutions, but over time these groups ...