IPv6 is the latest standard of IP Addresses and is currently in the faze of slowly transitioning out all the IPv4 addresses that are still in use today.
IPv6 addresses were mainly created because The Internet was running out of usable IP Addresses to assign out. Every computer or network that is connected to The Internet today needs to have a unique IP Address. As The Internet keeps growing unique IPv4 addresses are becoming extremely rare.
128 bit
IPv6 addresses are 128 bits in size compared to just 32 bits for an IPv4 address. To see how many IP Addresses you can use for a certain bit size simply raise the bit size to the number 2.
2^32 = 4,294,967,296
2^128 = 340,282,366,920,938,463,463,374,607,431,768,211,456
As you can see there are a lot more available IPv6 addresses than IPv4 addresses. However, the intent of having so many IPv6 addresses is not just that we will have that many to assign out, but it allows for a much more organized allocation of addresses. This will allow routing to be much more efficient with increased routing speeds.
Hexadecimal Representation
IPv6 Addresses are represented using hexadecimal numbers that are split up into 8 groups. An example of an IPv6 Address is:
FEDC:BA98:7654:3210:FEDC:BA98:7654:3210
Another example of an IPv6 Address that contains 0′s is:
1080:0:0:0:8:800:200C:417A
Remove Zeros
With IPv6 these 0′s that stand by themselves can be summarized by combining to colon symbols together (‘::’). So, the above address can by shortened like:
1080::8:800:200C:417A
No more than 2 colons (‘::’) can be in a row. The above example got rid of three 0′s and if you were shortening five 0′s you would still only use 2 colons (‘::’).
Prefixes
IPv6 address also have prefixes like IPv4 addresses to define where the subnet is. The prefixes are represented by a slash followed by a decimal value representing how many bits are used for the subnet. An example of an IPv6 Address with a prefix is:
12AB:0:0:CD30::/60
Focus on IPv4
The ICND1 exam mainly focuses on just IPv4. Also any subnetting on the ICND1 exam is also done using IPV4 addresses. Even though IPv6 addresses are not a huge focus for the ICND1 exam you still need to become familiar with them.
Related Articles:
- IP Addresses
- IP Address Classes
- How to Convert and IP Address to Binary (VIDEO)
- How to Subnet a Range of IP Addresses (VIDEO)
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