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Dawn of IPv6: Successor of IPv4

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Harmeet
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NEW DELHI, INDIA: Every device on the computer network is assigned an Internet protocol (IP) address, a numerical address which forms the basis of Internet communication.

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Internet catered 20 devices in 1995 but now 20 million devices are thriving on it. Electronic and knowledge connectivity leads to economic connectivity leading to an inclusive growth across all sections of society. With "fog computing," or a network to collect data from devices making up the "Internet of Things" (IoT), our world is definitely about to change.

Education, Telemedicine and Financial services are now enabled on the Internet and the accessibility of these services has become device independent. Internet access via mobile is gaining momentum. In many parts of world, the first screen seen by a citizen is cell phone.

Some even say that Internet should be recognized as a fundamental right to all citizens!!! Internet has evolved into an important medium for connecting not only people but also people with devices. Since the world is rapidly moving towards the concept of knowledge society based on ubiquitous and continuous availability of information, the next gen IPv6 will play an important role in ensuring open, secure and sustainable growth of the Internet.

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IPv6 is the successor protocol for IPv4. With the exhaustion of IPv4 and the ever exploding number of devices hooking on to the Internet, adoption of IPv6 has become a compulsion rather than an experiment. The massive proliferation of devices, need for newer and more demanding applications on a global level and the increasing role of networks in the way business is conducted are some of the pressing issues the IPv6 protocol seeks to cater to.

IPv6 provides unlimited address space, end- to- end IP communication, improved QoS and security, IP host mobility, auto configuration and supports jumbograms. It comes with built-in security, IPSec. It is loaded with features like efficient forwarding, interoperability and mobility capabilities, extensibility. This new protocol also enables neighboring node interaction. The scalability and flexibility of IPv6 triggers scope for innovation and assisting collaboration.

IPV6 brings quality of service that is required for several new applications such as IP telephony, video/audio, interactive games or ecommerce. IPv6 ensures QoS, a set of service requirements to deliver performance guarantee while transporting traffic over the network. IPv6 can be considered a mobile technology. IPv6 includes support for users who ‘roam' between different networks, with global notification when you leave one network and enter another one.

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There are an estimated 1.73 billion Internet users worldwide! According to mathematicians IPv6 is capable of delivering over three hundred and forty duodecillion IPs.

Even, the Third Generation Partnership Project (3GPP) has designated the session initiation protocol (SIP) as the call control protocol and Internet protocol version 6 (IPv6) as the only network protocol for 3G IP-based wireless networks.

For as long as there has been an Internet IPv4 has been synonymous with IP and nobody really stopped to think about which version of the protocol it was. But IPv4 has outlived its usefulness.

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To get you up to speed, IPv4 is 27 year old, 32-bit IP with 4.3 billion addresses, which looked like so many in the 1970s, but is not even close enough to today's Internet needs. Those mobile devices that we love so much like Android phones, iPads, etc., have been sucking down IPv4 addresses like a gas guzzling car from the time of cheap gasoline.

With PCs, smartphones, tablets, gaming systems, and just about everything else connecting to the Internet we've tapped the system dry.IPv4 protocol was designed initially keeping campus network in mind. Also, Not every IP address in the IPv4 pool can be assigned to the machines and devices used to access the Internet. Some IP addresses have been reserved for other uses, such as for use in private networks.

This means that the total number of IP addresses available for allocation is less than the total number in the pool. Clearly the internet needs more IP addresses as well as a more robust and secure protocol.

From a long time, we tried to manage to avoid running out of IPv4 addresses with the use of technologies like Network Address Translation (NAT) and Classless Inter-Domain Routing (CIDR), but unfortunately could not stop and outdo the destiny of IPv4. Therefore the broadband revolution is sure to ride on next generation Internet Protocol (IPv6) - the backbone of Internet.

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In practicality, IPv6 is expected to create over 18 trillion IP addresses. Worried? Don't be. With 18 trillion IP's, every living person on this planet can be assigned over 3000 dedicated IP's each. IPv6 could provide each and every square micrometer of the earth's surface with 5,000 unique addresses. IPv6 is a 128-bit addressing scheme designed to solve the various problems with 32-bit IPv4, or AKA the next 'big thing'.

With 128 -bit addressing, this means you will practically never run out of addresses in your allocated subnet. Want to give your coffee maker its own global address? Do it man, live the dream!

India is one of the few countries in the world where there has been an exponential boom in the number of networking devices with the IT and Telecom revolutions sweeping the country over the past decade. . India at present has 35 million IPv4 addresses against a user base of about 360 million data users. India is running out of IP addresses on IPv4 and the need to move to IPv6 has become more crucial.

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With undisputed prowess of half a decade of experience in networking, webservices in ERNET India are successfully running on dual stack. Many others like BHEL etc have joined the IPv6 transition exercise with enthusiasm. In these intervening years, a number of mechanisms have been developed to make the transition as easy as possible.

The first options is - dual stack wherein an organization essentially does not transition to IPv6 but simply builds a parallel IPv6 network next to their existing IPv4 network. The second of the available options is - tunnelling wherein IPv6 will be tunneled over an existing IPv4 network. The third is - translation wherein a translation process maps an IPv4 address to an IPv6 address (or vice versa) at a boundary router between an IPv4 and an IPv6 network.

IPv6 celebrated its 10th anniversary in 2008. Yet, until the last year or two it has lied in relative obscurity. Hopefully, this article might inspire you to start exploring IPv6 today.

It is important to realize that IPv6 is not only about exhaustion of IPv4, but about using new technology and getting the country to march on a more secure and scalable network, meeting the growing needs of an expanding Indian IT services and enabling their rollout in rural India to fulfil the objective of diminishing the digital divide that would benefit the billions of strong Indians irrespective of geographical and digital boundaries.

As Brian Fuller, Cadence, says, ‘the future's in our hands; let's not blow it!' Hence, lets dive into the world of IPv6.

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