Welcome to Windows-IPv6

The next-generation Internet Protocol

As we all know, the usage of the Internet has been growing very fast. From a computer network for scientists it has become THE communications network of all people around the world. No wonder that the original protocol definitions do not fit anymore.

The current commonly used protocol for Internet use is the Internet Protocol version 4 (IPv4). Although this protocol has proven itself over the years and is very reliable, it has a major problem, namely that it only allows for a limited number of 'addresses'. Although no one involved in the initial definition of this protocol could have ever imagined that the (then) enormous address space would ever exhaust, this is happening very fast now, or actually already has happened. See below a counter of the available number of IPV4 addresses and you can see it's quickly counting down.

At the moment many computers have been 'hidden' behind routers using the NAT protocol and even though this suits many people and companies very well as it also implicitly implements an unpassable firewall, it goes against the original idea of computers being able to connect directly and even though many people feel very ok with the security the NAT protocol gives them, many applications have to use many tricks to bypass this firewall like mechanism. Time for a new era of Internet protocol: Internet Protocol Version 6.