IPv6 with IPv4
The only way IPv6 will ever take hold, of course, is if it phases in gradually. A fullscale retooling of the Internet isn’t going to happen, so engineers designed IPv6 so that it could coexist with IPv4 over a long-term transition.
The intention is that an IPv6 protocol stack will operate beside the IPv4 protocol stack in a multiprotocol configuration, just as IPv4 once coexisted with IPX/SPX, NetBEUI, or other protocol stacks.
The IPv6 addressing system provides a means for accommodating existing IPv4 addresses within the address space. The original plan was to map every valid IPv4 address to a 128-bit IPv6 address by simply preceding the original address by 96 zero bits. This form, which is known as the IPv4-compatible IPv6 address ...
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