172
votes
Accepted
Why are IPv4 addresses running out?
The IPv4 Address Shortage
According to Vint Cerf (the father of IP), the IPv4 32-bit address size of was chosen arbitrarily. IP was a government/academic collaborative experiment, and the current ...
- 98.7k
87
votes
Accepted
Is "IPv10" a joke or a serious RFC draft?
As Ron said, anyone can write a proposal. I have a hard time taking proposals seriously from someone who suggests interconnecting satellites with optical fiber, though.
Also, I can't imagine this ...
- 17.1k
82
votes
Accepted
Why do we need IPv6?
Two things are getting confused here:
classful addressing vs CIDR
Masquerading / NAT
Going from classful addressing to Classless Inter Domain Routing (CIDR) was an improvement that made the address ...
- 6,720
57
votes
Accepted
Why does the IPv6 header not include a checksum?
One of the ideas around IPv6 was to speed up packet forwarding. To that end, several decisions were made. For example, the IPv6 header was greatly simplified and is a fixed length, unlike the variable ...
- 98.7k
38
votes
Why are IPv4 addresses running out?
Ron Maupin's answer gives a brilliant overview of the IPv4 shortage, but I'd like to address this part of your question:
Why can't a city (for example) have just one IP address and all homes in ...
- 480
31
votes
Accepted
Will IPv6 make private IP addresses become obsolete?
No, private addressing will not become obsolete. But actually, there are two kinds of private addresses: the Unique Local Addresses (ULAs) and the link-local addresses (LLAs).
There will always be a ...
- 1,009
28
votes
Is "IPv10" a joke or a serious RFC draft?
You must remember that anyone can submit proposals to the IETF, and they are taken seriously, until they are either adopted or die due to lack of interest.
This particular proposal has expired and ...
- 98.7k
27
votes
Why does the IPv6 header not include a checksum?
Because it's redundant.
All the common link-layer protocols, like Ethernet or WiFi, have their own error checking and error correction mechanisms, so physical transmission errors are already unlikely....
- 370
25
votes
Accepted
Why do we need ports with IPv6?
An IP address targets a host on the network layer. Transport layer ports multiplex an L4 protocol within a host (to different processes/services). Both are different things on different layers.
...
- 82.7k
22
votes
Accepted
What is Link-local addressing?
I never seen 169.254/16 working in IPv4.
A PC automatically acquires a 169.254.x.x/16 address if it does not receive an IP address from a DHCP server. If you disable the DHCP server on your home or ...
- 2,337
22
votes
Difference between :: and ::1
:: is the unspecified address (0:0:0:0:0:0:0:0), and it is only used in packets as the source address of a host that does not yet have an address and is trying to get an address assigned. What you see ...
- 98.7k
20
votes
Where can I use the IPv6 documentation prefix
The IPv6 documentation prefix (2001:db8:::/32) must be used ONLY for documentation purposes. It means written examples, diagrams, PPT presentations, Textbook explanations, etc.
This range shouldn't ...
- 4,497
20
votes
How does the shortage of IPv4 public IPs influence existing firewalls?
You're late to the game: IPv4 addresses are already exhausted, and have been for a number of years. All the major manufacturers have included IPv6 capability (in varying degrees) in their product ...
- 67.1k
19
votes
Accepted
What happened to IPv5?
The first four bits in the IP header are used to store the Protocol version (4 or 6).
The version 5 was assigned to another protocol, the Internet Steam Protocol and so was not available for the ...
- 19.5k
19
votes
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What are common sizes to split a /29 - /32 IPv6 subnet?
Some simple guidelines that work most of the time:
Dividing your /29
The standard size of your allocation from RIPE NCC is a /32
A /32 is a well-accepted prefix size in the global routing table
You ...
- 6,720
19
votes
Accepted
What happens when a subnet reaches capacity?
A subnet (network) is really just a collection of contiguous addresses within a binary mask. It is simply a logical way to divide address block. If you run out of addresses in a network (subnet), then ...
- 98.7k
19
votes
Is "IPv10" a joke or a serious RFC draft?
Is “IPv10” a joke or a serious RFC draft?
Both. That draft doesn't solve a single problem but opens a can of new ones. I guess that bloke is serious and he doesn't get what ridiculous schemes he's ...
- 82.7k
17
votes
Accepted
Why the first octet of a MAC address always end with a binary 0?
You may notice that two least-significant bits of the most-significant byte of a 48-bit MAC address are usually set to 0 (as in all your examples). There are two flags in the most-significant byte of ...
- 98.7k
16
votes
Why do we need IPv6?
The Internet Protocol (IP) was designed to provide end-to-end connectivity.
The 32 bits of an IPv4 address only allow for about 4.3 billion unique addresses. Then you must subtract a bunch of ...
- 98.7k
16
votes
Why are IPv4 addresses running out?
Right now, every home has its own IP address. Why can't a city (for example) have just one IP address and all homes in this city would just be on a private network of that city?
Exactly this is ...
- 2,346
15
votes
Accepted
IPv6 prefix interpretation
From RFC4291 section 2.3:
An IPv6 address prefix is represented by the notation:
ipv6-address/prefix-length
The whole thing is called prefix.
First part up to / is called address.
Second part ...
- 1,604
14
votes
Usage of Flow label in IPv6 header?
The above answer isn't really correct. The flow label isn't designed for packet ordering - IP does not care about order, it is an unreliable services whose only goal is delivery on layer3.
Better way ...
- 141
14
votes
Accepted
Using IP subnet at multiple datacenters
Connect the two DCs with a private connection. Then advertise the /24 at both Data Centers.
When traffic arrives at one DC for the other, your internal devices route or switch the traffic as ...
- 715
14
votes
Could IPv6 make NAT / port numbers redundant?
IPv6 does not have a NAT standard as IPv4 does (NAT breaks the end-to-end premise of IP, and IPv6 was designed to restore that). There is an experimental RFC for IPv6 NAT, but it is a one-to-one NAT ...
- 98.7k
13
votes
Accepted
IPv6 and online privacy and security
Let's look at a live example. This being from my Linux workstation. (And for simplicity I actually omitted a couple of addresses.) I'll explain each of the addresses in turn:
$ ip a s dev br0
3: br0: &...
- 478
13
votes
Accepted
Why do IPv6 unique local addresses have to have a /48 prefix?
The requirement exists to prevent collisions. This is a bit more important than most people recognize.
Even if you have systems which currently don't communicate with other systems over the internet ...
- 764
12
votes
What is Link-local addressing?
Link-local addresses are used for communication between two hosts (which are there on the same link) when no other IP address is specified.
In simple words, at the time of booting up, OS tries to ...
- 423
12
votes
Accepted
Does IP provide QoS or not?
IPv4 has the DSCP (formerly ToS) field, and IPv6 has the Traffic Class field. Those are just fields in the IP headers. IP itself does not have any QoS. QoS is implemented by network devices, often ...
- 98.7k
12
votes
Accepted
How does router advertisement in IPv6 avoid IP conflict?
A host performs Duplicate Address Detection (DAD) before actually activating the given address on the interface
RFC 2462 has to say about this:
5.4. Duplicate Address Detection
Duplicate Address ...
- 8,826
12
votes
Accepted
What is the use-case of including the IPv4 address in IPv6 address?
There are some common use cases:
::ffff:192.168.0.1
This is used in software that uses IPv6 sockets even for handling IPv4 connections. That makes it easier to write software because everything ...
- 6,720
Only top scored, non community-wiki answers of a minimum length are eligible