National Voluteering Week

Pencil.org thanks all the New York City volunteers who add their expertise to the children in our Public Schools.

IPv6

IPv6 is a hot topic at the Internet Society. IPv6 means Internet protocol version 6. Internet protocol is the communication system that directs Internet traffic. IP addresses are the unique numbers assigned to each device: computer, printer, etc. IPv6, developed by the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF), is slated to replace the current IPv4 to remedy address exhaustion. The easiest way to recognize which version an IP address is by the separators. IPv4's numeric sequence is separated by decimals. The IPv6 sequence is separated by colons and has a 128 bit address; version 4 is only 32 bit. Internet Assigned Numbers Authority (IANA) is the global management agent which oversees five regional registries and assigns blocks of IP addresses to our local Internet Service Providers (ISP).

 

Some of the advantages of IPv6 are:

• authentication
• cost efficient bandwidth cost limits
• forward flexibility for future options
• real-time quality of service options
• expanded addressing; supports more levels of addressing hierarchy, more addresses; auto configuration of addresses
• upper layer transport
• has a scope field to multicast addresses and anycast to send a data package to any group of nodes (Nodes are hosts that are not routers)

The Internet Protocol Suite has an application layer, transport layer and link layer.
Although this topic is very important, you will receive the advantages of this protocol without knowlege of why or how it works; but it is fun to know.