Windows Server® 2012 Unleashed

Defining the Structure of IPv6

To say that IPv6 is complicated is an understatement. Attempting to understand IPv4 has been difficult enough for network engineers; throw in hexadecimal 128-bit addresses and life becomes much more interesting. At a minimum, however, the basics of IPv6 must be understood as future networks will use the protocol more and more as time goes by.

IPv6 was written to solve many of the problems that persist on the modern Internet today. The most notable areas that IPv6 improved upon are the following:

• Vastly improved address space—The differences between the available addresses from IPv4 to IPv6 are literally exponential. Without taking into account loss because of subnetting and other factors, IPv4 could support up ...