What is Windows IPV6

Internet Protocol version 6 (IPv6) is the next-generation Internet Layer protocol for packet-switched internetworks and the Internet. IPv4 is currently the dominant Internet Protocol version, and was the first to receive widespread use. In December 1998, the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) designated IPv6 as the successor to version 4 by the publication of a Standards Track specification, RFC 2460.

In December 2008, despite celebrating its 10th anniversary as a Standards Track protocol, IPv6 was only in its infancy in terms of general worldwide deployment. A recent study by Google indicates that penetration is still less than 1% of Internet traffic in any country. The leaders are Russia (0.76%), France (0.65%), Ukraine (0.64%), Norway (0.49%), and the United States (0.45%). Although Asia leads in terms of absolute deployment numbers, the relative penetration is smaller (e.g., China: 0.24%). IPv6 is implemented on all major operating systems and is use in commercial, business, and home consumer environments. According to the study, Mac OS X leads in IPv6 penetration of 2.44%, followed by Linux (0.93%) and Windows Vista (0.32%).

IPv6 has a much larger address space than IPv4. This results from the use of a 128-bit address, where IPv4 uses only 32 bits. The new address space thus supports 2128 (about 3.4x10exp38) addresses. This expansion provides flexibility in allocating addresses and routing traffic and eliminates the primary need for network address translation (NAT). NAT gained widespread deployment as an effort to alleviate IPv4 address exhaustion.

IPv6 also implements new features that simplify aspects of address assignment (stateless address autoconfiguration) and network renumbering (prefix and router announcements) when changing Internet connectivity providers. The IPv6 subnet size has been standardized by fixing the size of the host identifier portion of an address to 64 bits to facilitate an automatic mechanism for forming the host identifier from Link Layer media addressing information (MAC address).

Network security is integrated into the design of the IPv6 architecture. Internet Protocol Security (IPsec) was originally developed for IPv6, but found widespread optional deployment first in IPv4 (into which it was back-engineered). The IPv6 specifications mandate IPsec implementation as a fundamental interoperability requirement.

The general requirements for implementing IPv6 on a network host are specified in RFC 4294.