IPv6

IPv6

Internet Protocol version 6 (IPv6) is a version of the Internet Protocol (IP). It is designed to succeed the Internet Protocol version 4 (IPv4). The Internet operates by transferring data between hosts in small packets that are independently routed across networks as specified by an international communications protocol known as the Internet Protocol.

Each host or computer on the Internet requires an IP address in order to communicate. The growth of the Internet has created a need for more addresses than are possible with IPv4. IPv6 was developed by the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) to deal with this long-anticipated IPv4 address exhaustion, and is described in Internet standard document RFC 2460, published in December 1998.[1] Like IPv4, IPv6 is an internet-layer protocol for packet-switched internetworking and provides end-to-end datagram transmission across multiple IP networks. While IPv4 allows 32 bits for an Internet Protocol address, and can therefore support 232 (4,294,967,296) addresses, IPv6 uses 128-bit addresses, so the new address space supports 2128 (approximately 340 undecillion or 3.4×1038) addresses. This expansion allows for many more devices and users on the internet as well as extra flexibility in allocating addresses and efficiency for routing traffic. It also eliminates the primary need for network address translation (NAT), which gained widespread deployment as an effort to alleviate IPv4 address exhaustion.

IPv6 also implements additional features not present in IPv4. It simplifies aspects of address assignment (stateless address autoconfiguration), network renumbering and router announcements when changing Internet connectivity providers. The IPv6 subnet size has been standardized by fixing the size of the host identifier portion of an address to 64 bits to facilitate an automatic mechanism for forming the host identifier from link-layer media addressing information (MAC address). Network security is also integrated into the design of the IPv6 architecture, and the IPv6 specification mandates support for IPsec as a fundamental interoperability requirement.

The last top level (/8) block of free IPv4 addresses was assigned in February 2011 by IANA to the 5 RIRs, although many free addresses still remain in most assigned blocks and each RIR will continue with standard policy until it is at its last /8. After that, only 1024 addresses (a /22) are made available from the RIR for each LIR – currently, only APNIC has already reached this stage.[2] While IPv6 is supported on all major operating systems in use in commercial, business, and home consumer environments,[3] IPv6 does not implement interoperability features with IPv4, and creates essentially a parallel, independent network. Exchanging traffic between the two networks requires special translator gateways, but modern computer operating systems implement dual-protocol software for transparent access to both networks either natively or using a tunneling protocol such as 6to4, 6in4, or Teredo. In December 2010, despite marking its 12th anniversary as a Standards Track protocol, IPv6 was only in its infancy in terms of general worldwide deployment. A 2008 study[4] by Google Inc. indicated that penetration was still less than one percent of Internet-enabled hosts in any country at that time.

Contents

Motivation and origins

IPv4

The first publicly used version of the Internet Protocol, Version 4 (IPv4), provides an addressing capability of 232 or approximately 4.3 billion addresses.

During the first decade of operation of the Internet (by the late 1980s), it became apparent that methods had to be developed to conserve address space. In the early 1990s, even after the redesign of the addressing system using a classless network model, it became clear that this would not suffice to prevent IPv4 address exhaustion, and that further changes to the Internet infrastructure were needed.[5]

Working-group proposal

By the beginning of 1992, several proposals appeared and by the end of 1992, the IETF announced a call for white papers.[6] In September 1993, the IETF created a temporary, ad-hoc IP Next Generation (IPng) area to deal specifically with IPng issues. The new area was led by Allison Mankin and Scott Bradner, and had a directorate with 15 engineers from diverse backgrounds for direction-setting and preliminary document review:[5][7][note 1]

The Internet Engineering Task Force adopted the IPng model on July 25, 1994, with the formation of several IPng working groups.[5] By 1996, a series of RFCs was released defining Internet Protocol version 6 (IPv6), starting with RFC 1883. (Version 5 was used by the experimental Internet Stream Protocol.)

It is widely expected that IPv4 will be supported alongside IPv6 for the foreseeable future. IPv4-only and IPv6-only nodes cannot communicate directly, and need assistance from an intermediary gateway or must use other transition mechanisms.

Exhaustion of IPv4 addresses

On February 3, 2011, in a ceremony in Miami, the Internet Assigned Numbers Authority (IANA) assigned the last batch of 5 /8 address blocks to the Regional Internet Registries.,[8] officially depleting the global pool of completely fresh blocks of addresses.[9] Each of the address blocks represents approximately 16.7 million possible addresses, or over 80 million combined potential addresses.

These addresses could well be fully consumed within three to six months of that time at current rates of allocation.[10] APNIC was the first RIR to exhaust its regional pool on 15 April 2011, except for a small amount of address space reserved for the transition to IPv6, which will be allocated in a much more restricted way.[11]

In 2003, the director of Asia-Pacific Network Information Centre (APNIC), Paul Wilson, stated that, based on then-current rates of deployment, the available space would last for one or two decades.[12] In September 2005, a report by Cisco Systems suggested that the pool of available addresses would exhaust in as little as 4 to 5 years.[13] In 2008, a policy process started for the end-game and post-exhaustion era.[14] In 2010, a daily updated report projected the global address pool exhaustion by the first quarter of 2011, and depletion at the five regional Internet registries before the end of 2011.[15]

Comparison to IPv4

IPv6 specifies a new packet format, designed to minimize packet header processing by routers.[1][16] Because the headers of IPv4 packets and IPv6 packets are significantly different, the two protocols are not interoperable. However, in most respects, IPv6 is a conservative extension of IPv4. Most transport and application-layer protocols need little or no change to operate over IPv6; exceptions are application protocols that embed internet-layer addresses, such as FTP and NTPv3.

Larger address space

Decomposition of an IPv6 address into its binary form

The most important feature of IPv6 is a much larger address space than in IPv4. The length of an IPv6 address is 128 bits, compared to 32 bits in IPv4.[1] The address space therefore supports 2128 or approximately 3.4×1038 addresses. By comparison, this amounts to approximately 5×1028 addresses for each of the 6.8 billion people alive in 2010.[17] In addition, the IPv4 address space is poorly allocated, with approximately 14% of all available addresses utilized.[18] While these numbers are large, it was not the intent of the designers of the IPv6 address space to assure geographical saturation with usable addresses. Rather, the longer addresses simplify allocation of addresses, enable efficient route aggregation, and allow implementation of special addressing features. In IPv4, complex Classless Inter-Domain Routing (CIDR) methods were developed to make the best use of the small address space. The standard size of a subnet in IPv6 is 264 addresses, the square of the size of the entire IPv4 address space. Thus, actual address space utilization rates will be small in IPv6, but network management and routing efficiency is improved by the large subnet space and hierarchical route aggregation.

Renumbering an existing network for a new connectivity provider with different routing prefixes is a major effort with IPv4.[19][20] With IPv6, however, changing the prefix announced by a few routers can in principle renumber an entire network since the host identifiers (the least-significant 64 bits of an address) can be independently self-configured by a host.[citation needed]

Multicasting

Multicasting, the transmission of a packet to multiple destinations in a single send operation, is part of the base specification in IPv6. In IPv4 this is an optional although commonly implemented feature.[21] IPv6 multicast addressing shares common features and protocols with IPv4 multicast, but also provides changes and improvements by eliminating the need for certain protocols. IPv6 does not implement traditional IP broadcast, i.e. the transmission of a packet to all hosts on the attached link using a special broadcast address, and therefore does not define broadcast addresses. In IPv6, the same result can be achieved by sending a packet to the link-local all nodes multicast group at address ff02::1, which is analogous to IPv4 multicast to address 224.0.0.1. IPv6 also supports new multicast solutions, including embedding rendezvous point addresses in an IPv6 multicast group address which simplifies the deployment of inter-domain solutions.[22]

In IPv4 it was very difficult for an organization to get even one globally routable multicast group assignment and the implementation of inter-domain solutions was very arcane.[23] Unicast address assignments by a local Internet registry for IPv6 have at least a 64-bit routing prefix, yielding the smallest subnet size available in IPv6 (also 64 bits). With such an assignment it is possible to embed the unicast address prefix into the IPv6 multicast address format, while still providing a 32-bit block, the least significant bits of the address, or approximately 4.2 billion multicast group identifiers.[citation needed] Thus each user of an IPv6 subnet automatically has available a set of globally routable source-specific multicast groups for multicast applications.[24]

Stateless address autoconfiguration (SLAAC)

IPv6 hosts can configure themselves automatically when connected to a routed IPv6 network using Internet Control Message Protocol version 6 (ICMPv6) router discovery messages. When first connected to a network, a host sends a link-local router solicitation multicast request for its configuration parameters; if configured suitably, routers respond to such a request with a router advertisement packet that contains network-layer configuration parameters.[25]

If IPv6 stateless address autoconfiguration is unsuitable for an application, a network may use stateful configuration with the Dynamic Host Configuration Protocol version 6 (DHCPv6) or hosts may be configured statically.

Routers present a special case of requirements for address configuration, as they often are sources for autoconfiguration information, such as router and prefix advertisements. Stateless configuration for routers can be achieved with a special router renumbering protocol.[26]

Mandatory support for network-layer security

Internet Protocol Security (IPsec) was originally developed for IPv6, but found widespread deployment first in IPv4, into which it was back-engineered. IPsec is an integral part of the base protocol suite in IPv6.[1] IPsec support is mandatory in IPv6 but optional for IPv4.

Simplified processing by routers

In IPv6, the packet header and the process of packet forwarding have been simplified. Although IPv6 packet headers are at least twice the size of IPv4 packet headers, packet processing by routers is generally more efficient,[1][16] thereby extending the end-to-end principle of Internet design. Specifically:

  • The packet header in IPv6 is simpler than that used in IPv4, with many rarely used fields moved to separate optional header extensions.
  • IPv6 routers do not perform fragmentation. IPv6 hosts are required to either perform path MTU discovery, perform end-to-end fragmentation, or to send packets no larger than the IPv6 default minimum MTU size of 1280 octets.
  • The IPv6 header is not protected by a checksum; integrity protection is assumed to be assured by both link-layer and higher-layer (TCP, UDP, etc.) error detection.[note 2] Therefore, IPv6 routers do not need to recompute a checksum when header fields (such as the time to live (TTL) or hop count) change.[note 3]
  • The TTL field of IPv4 has been renamed to Hop Limit, reflecting the fact that routers are no longer expected to compute the time a packet has spent in a queue.

Mobility

Unlike mobile IPv4, mobile IPv6 avoids triangular routing and is therefore as efficient as native IPv6. IPv6 routers may also support network mobility which allows entire subnets to move to a new router connection point without renumbering.[27]

Options extensibility

The IPv6 protocol header has a fixed size (40 octets). Options are implemented as additional extension headers after the IPv6 header, which limits their size only by the size of an entire packet. The extension header mechanism provides extensibility to support future services for quality of service, security, mobility, and others, without redesign of the basic protocol.[1]

Jumbograms

IPv4 limits packets to 65535 (216 – 1) octets of payload. IPv6 has optional support for packets over this limit, referred to as jumbograms, which can be as large as 4294967295 (232 – 1) octets. The use of jumbograms may improve performance over high-MTU links. The use of jumbograms is indicated by the Jumbo Payload Option header.[28]

Packet format

IPv6 packet header.

The IPv6 packet is composed of two parts: the packet header and the payload. The header consists of a fixed portion with minimal functionality required for all packets and may contain optional extension to implement special features.

The fixed header occupies the first 40 octets (320 bits) of the IPv6 packet. It contains the source and destination addresses, traffic classification options, a hop counter, and a pointer for extension headers if any. The Next Header field, present in each extension as well, points to the next element in the chain of extensions. The last field points to the upper-layer protocol that is carried in the packet's payload.

Extension headers carry options that are used for special treatment of a packet in the network, e.g., for routing, fragmentation, and for security using the IPsec framework.

The payload can have a size of up to 64KB without special options, or larger with a jumbo payload option in a Hop-By-Hop Options extension header.

Unlike in IPv4, fragmentation is handled only in the end points of a communication session; routers never fragment a packet, and hosts are expected to use Path MTU Discovery to select a packet size that can traverse the entire communications path.

Addressing

The most important feature of IPv6 is a much larger address space than in IPv4. IPv6 addresses are 128 bits long, compared to only 32 bits previously.[29] While the IPv4 address space contains only about 4.3×109 (4.3 billion) addresses, IPv6 supports approximately 3.4×1038 (340 undecillion) unique addresses, deemed enough for the foreseeable future.[30]

IPv6 addresses are written in eight groups of four hexadecimal digits separated by colons, for example, 2001:0db8:85a3:0000:0000:8a2e:0370:7334. IPv6 unicast addresses other than those that start with binary 000 are logically divided into two parts: a 64-bit (sub-)network prefix, and a 64-bit interface identifier.[31]

For stateless address autoconfiguration (SLAAC) to work, subnets require a /64 address block as defined in RFC 4291 section 2.5.1. Local Internet registries get assigned at least /32 blocks, which they divide among ISPs.[32] The obsolete RFC 3177 recommended the assignment of a /48 to end consumer sites. This was replaced by RFC 6177, which "recommends giving home sites significantly more than a single /64, but does not recommend that every home site be given a /48 either." /56s are specifically considered. It remains to be seen if ISPs will honor this recommendation; for example, during initial trials Comcast customers have been given a single /64 network.[33]

IPv6 addresses are classified by three types of networking methodologies: unicast addresses identify each network interface, anycast addresses identify a group of interfaces, usually at different locations of which the nearest one is automatically selected, and multicast addresses are used to deliver one packet to many interfaces. The broadcast method is not implemented in IPv6. Each IPv6 address has a scope, which specifies in which part of the network it is valid and unique. Some addresses are unique only on the local (sub-)network; Others are globally unique.

Some IPv6 addresses are reserved for special purposes, such as the address for loopback, 6to4 tunneling, Teredo tunneling and several more. See RFC 5156. Also, some address ranges are considered special, such as link-local addresses for use on the local link only, Unique Local addresses (ULA) as described in RFC 4193 and solicited-node multicast addresses used in the Neighbor Discovery Protocol.

IPv6 in the Domain Name System

In the Domain Name System, hostnames are mapped to IPv6 addresses by AAAA resource records, so-called quad-A records. For reverse resolution, the IETF reserved the domain ip6.arpa, where the name space is hierarchically divided by the 1-digit hexadecimal representation of nibble units (4 bits) of the IPv6 address. This scheme is defined in RFC 3596.

Address Format

IPv6 addresses have two logical parts: a 64-bit network prefix, and a 64-bit host address part. (The host address is often automatically generated from the interface MAC address.[34]) An IPv6 address is represented by 8 groups of 16-bit hexadecimal values separated by colons (:) shown as follows:

2001:0db8:85a3:0000:0000:8a2e:0370:7334

The hexadecimal digits are case-insensitive.

The 128-bit IPv6 address can be abbreviated with the following rules:

  • Rule one: Leading zeroes within a 16-bit value may be omitted. For example, the address fe80:0000:0000:0000:0202:b3ff:fe1e:8329 may be written as fe80:0:0:0:202:b3ff:fe1e:8329
  • Rule two: One group of consecutive zeroes within an address may be replaced by a double colon. For example, fe80:0:0:0:202:b3ff:fe1e:8329 becomes fe80::202:b3ff:fe1e:8329

A single IPv6 address can be represented in several different ways, such as 2001:db8::1:0:0:1 and 2001:0DB8:0:0:1::1. RFC 5952 recommends a canonical textual representation.

Transition mechanisms