Internet Protocol - IPv4 vs IPv6 as Fast As Possible
Techquickie
·Techquickie
·2015-05-07
·
1,177 words · ~5 min read
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the internet protocol is the main set of rules that governs the exchange or
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transmission of data between devices on separate networks it's got two main jobs
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and for both of them an easy comparison can be made to the mail system so number
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one is addressing hosts imagine if everyone on earth just came up with
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their own idea of how they should go about sending an item to someone ideas
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like putting the return address inside the box for better personal security or
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sending out six of the same thing to everyone on a city block to ensure that
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at least one of them will reach the intended target may be well-intentioned
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but would create a ton of unnecessary overhead leading to inefficiency the
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internet protocol dictates the header format of a datagram or packet similar
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to the label on a package as well as the way the data payload is nested within it
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to improve efficiency number two is routing or predicting and selecting the
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best possible path for data transmission across network boundaries this function
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is mostly performed by routers and it's the equivalent of your parcel uh let's
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say it's heading from the west coast of the us to france reaching a courier hub
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in chicago where the decision gets made to forward it to new york then paris
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instead of letting it make stopovers in brisbane new delhi moscow and toronto
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along the way seems pretty straightforward right well
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actually we've got a small problem at the moment ipv4 the first non-experimental version
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of the internet protocol and a cornerstone of the internet as we know
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it has only received relatively minor revisions since its original development
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in the late 70s when the digital lifestyle we enjoyed today with all of
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these connected devices all around us was basically science fiction so it has
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some limitations that ipv6 was designed
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to deal with first up ipv4 allows for
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only about 4 billion unique addresses which might sound like a lot but once
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you do the math it's not enough for every device on earth to have its own
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address and without a unique address there's no way to ensure that a packet
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is being delivered to the correct destination ipv6 replaces ipv4 32-bit
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address with a 128-bit address that allows about 304
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trillion trillion trillion addresses enough for every person on earth to have
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billions of addresses for every device they own well hold on a second Linus 4
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billion is already not enough how did we make it this far great question aside
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from reusing ip addresses one of the main ways we've alleviated the need to
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have more of them is through network address translation this is kind of like
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apartment numbers two completely separate buildings can each have an
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apartment number 804 in much the same way that your pc at home can have the
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same 192.168 point something point whatever
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private i p address as your pc at work but their data never gets mis-delivered
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in the same way that those apartments have different public street addresses
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all those overlapping private ips are behind unique public ips from which all
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the traffic appears to originate well that sounds great Linus why can't we
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just keep doing that once again great question nat is not a bad thing and you
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can keep using it with ipv6 if you want it brings some real benefits to the
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table in terms of control and convenience if you were to switch ips
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for example but security is a mixed bag with its inherent firewall-like features
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considered good but the fact that it messes with packet tampering prevention
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protocols like ipsec considered bad and
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on top of that nat adds performance overhead and increases the complexity of
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peer-to-peer connections which are great for file sharing communication and much
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much more which leads into my next point
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simplicity having each device be able to
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address every other device on the network will improve performance
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directly and on top of that with ipv6 devices can auto configure themselves
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rather than relying on dhcp to get an address and the header data that must be
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included with every packet while actually larger to accommodate the
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longer addresses has a ton of extraneous stuff that's been cut out to reduce
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overhead while allowing more customizability for the future sounds
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great Linus but just like we predicted that we'd need 64-bit processors to
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address more memory we knew this was coming so why didn't we switch two five
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or even ten years ago the answer is compatibility trying to access a website
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that only runs ipv6 from an ipv4 system
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just wouldn't work there's no backwards compatibility built in but that said
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older hardware can sometimes be upgraded with new firmware for compatibility
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modern pc operating systems and even most phones out there have been ipv6
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capable for some time now so the issue actually isn't on our side us consumers
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no it's the internet service providers holding us back once again moving to
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purely ipv6 equipment or dual stack gear that can operate with both protocols is
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expensive doesn't offer an easily communicated benefit to joe average
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customer and most troubling of all removes the need for carrier-grade nat
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solutions that add overhead but also give your isp a great deal of visibility
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and control over the traffic in and out
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so why would they bother given how fond the average isp is of important stuff
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like maintaining net neutrality which i would encourage you to read up on
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because whether it seems important or not the net neutrality debate will have
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a profound impact on the way internet communication works in the future
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regardless of when we transition to ipv6
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speaking of reading up on things not everyone has time to sit down with a
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book and catch up on their reading and for those folks there's audible.com
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enjoy an opposite subtract love story stuff like one plus one by jojo moyes
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nothing to do with the phone by the way the best part is that if you head over to audible.com techwiki and try out
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signing up give it a shot thanks audible for sponsoring this video thanks to all
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of you for watching like if you liked it dislike it if you disliked it leave a comment with a suggestion for future
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fastest possible videos and as always don't forget to subscribe if you haven't
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already