List and describe three improvements that IPv6 has over IPv4

List and describe three improvements that IPv6 has over IPv4

Solution

Following are three main improvements that IPv6 over IPv4:

1). IPv6 has 128 bit addresses when compared to 32 bit addresses of IPv4 which results in a very large increase in the availability of IP addresses. Below table dipict the IP address version & its size.

128 bits which allow for 340,282,366,920,938,463,463,374,607,431,768,211,456(3.4*10^38) possible addresses

2).More Efficient Packet Processing
IPv6\'s simplified packet header makes packet processing more efficient. Compared with IPv4, IPv6 contains no IP-level checksum, so the checksum does not need to be recalculated at every router hop. Getting rid of the IP-level checksum was possible because most link-layer technologies already contain checksum and error-control capabilities. In addition, most transport layers, which handle end-to-end connectivity, have a checksum that enables error detection.

3). Security, Encryption and IPsec built in

IPSec, which provides confidentiality, authentication and data integrity, is baked into in IPv6. Because of their potential to carry malware, IPv4 ICMP packets are often blocked by corporate firewalls, but ICMPv6, the implementation of the Internet Control Message Protocol for IPv6, may be permitted because IPSec can be applied to the ICMPv6 packets. IPv6 also comes with greater security since it has an encryption option built in. This means that the communications will be secured at the lowest level possible, via IPsec, each packet that gets sent has to be decrypted for it to be interpreted.