IPV6—The Next Generation
While IP Version 6 (IPV6) is really beyond the scope of this book, this section will provide a very brief glimpse into what it is and one of the main driving forces behind its creation—the pending lack of available IP addresses.
All the IP addresses we have used up to now have been based on a 32-bit value, separated into four eight-bit fields. These are known as IP Version 4 (IPV4) addresses. One of the limitations we have with this protocol is that we only have around four billion addresses available (even less when we take network and broadcast addresses into account).
Nowadays, many more computers are being connected to the Internet than were first expected, each of them requiring an IP address. Coupled with this, ...
Get Solaris™ Operating Environment Boot Camp now with the O’Reilly learning platform.
O’Reilly members experience books, live events, courses curated by job role, and more from O’Reilly and nearly 200 top publishers.
