the internet protocol is the main set of rules that governs the exchange or
transmission of data between devices on separate networks it's got two main jobs
and for both of them an easy comparison can be made to the mail system so number
one is addressing hosts imagine if everyone on earth just came up with
their own idea of how they should go about sending an item to someone ideas
like putting the return address inside the box for better personal security or
sending out six of the same thing to everyone on a city block to ensure that
at least one of them will reach the intended target may be well-intentioned
but would create a ton of unnecessary overhead leading to inefficiency the
internet protocol dictates the header format of a datagram or packet similar
to the label on a package as well as the way the data payload is nested within it
to improve efficiency number two is routing or predicting and selecting the
best possible path for data transmission across network boundaries this function
is mostly performed by routers and it's the equivalent of your parcel uh let's
say it's heading from the west coast of the us to france reaching a courier hub
in chicago where the decision gets made to forward it to new york then paris
instead of letting it make stopovers in brisbane new delhi moscow and toronto
along the way seems pretty straightforward right well
actually we've got a small problem at the moment ipv4 the first non-experimental version
of the internet protocol and a cornerstone of the internet as we know
it has only received relatively minor revisions since its original development
in the late 70s when the digital lifestyle we enjoyed today with all of
these connected devices all around us was basically science fiction so it has
some limitations that ipv6 was designed
to deal with first up ipv4 allows for
only about 4 billion unique addresses which might sound like a lot but once
you do the math it's not enough for every device on earth to have its own
address and without a unique address there's no way to ensure that a packet
is being delivered to the correct destination ipv6 replaces ipv4 32-bit
address with a 128-bit address that allows about 304
trillion trillion trillion addresses enough for every person on earth to have
billions of addresses for every device they own well hold on a second Linus 4
billion is already not enough how did we make it this far great question aside
from reusing ip addresses one of the main ways we've alleviated the need to
have more of them is through network address translation this is kind of like
apartment numbers two completely separate buildings can each have an
apartment number 804 in much the same way that your pc at home can have the
same 192.168 point something point whatever
private i p address as your pc at work but their data never gets mis-delivered
in the same way that those apartments have different public street addresses
all those overlapping private ips are behind unique public ips from which all
the traffic appears to originate well that sounds great Linus why can't we
just keep doing that once again great question nat is not a bad thing and you
can keep using it with ipv6 if you want it brings some real benefits to the
table in terms of control and convenience if you were to switch ips
for example but security is a mixed bag with its inherent firewall-like features
considered good but the fact that it messes with packet tampering prevention
protocols like ipsec considered bad and
on top of that nat adds performance overhead and increases the complexity of
peer-to-peer connections which are great for file sharing communication and much
much more which leads into my next point
simplicity having each device be able to
address every other device on the network will improve performance
directly and on top of that with ipv6 devices can auto configure themselves
rather than relying on dhcp to get an address and the header data that must be
included with every packet while actually larger to accommodate the
longer addresses has a ton of extraneous stuff that's been cut out to reduce
overhead while allowing more customizability for the future sounds
great Linus but just like we predicted that we'd need 64-bit processors to
address more memory we knew this was coming so why didn't we switch two five
or even ten years ago the answer is compatibility trying to access a website
that only runs ipv6 from an ipv4 system
just wouldn't work there's no backwards compatibility built in but that said
older hardware can sometimes be upgraded with new firmware for compatibility
modern pc operating systems and even most phones out there have been ipv6
capable for some time now so the issue actually isn't on our side us consumers
no it's the internet service providers holding us back once again moving to
purely ipv6 equipment or dual stack gear that can operate with both protocols is
expensive doesn't offer an easily communicated benefit to joe average
customer and most troubling of all removes the need for carrier-grade nat
solutions that add overhead but also give your isp a great deal of visibility
and control over the traffic in and out
so why would they bother given how fond the average isp is of important stuff
like maintaining net neutrality which i would encourage you to read up on
because whether it seems important or not the net neutrality debate will have
a profound impact on the way internet communication works in the future
regardless of when we transition to ipv6
speaking of reading up on things not everyone has time to sit down with a
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