Internet Protocol version 6 (IPv6)Any information presented on IP version 6 (IPv6) will not be complete without talking about IP version 4 (IPv4), its predecessor. For completeness, a brief introduction to IPv4 will be made. In networking computers and devices, Internet Protocol (IP) plays a very important role. The IP address, found at the Internet layer of the Department of Defense (DoD) model, allows devices to communicate using logical addresses called IP addresses. The importance of an IP address for communication will be felt in the analogy of surface mail. How possible would it be to send a letter to someone whose address we don't know? The IP address makes it possible to know the source of a packet and its destination for proper delivery by the IP protocol.IPv6 MotivationThe development of IPv6 is motivated by the shortcomings of its predecessor IPv4. IPv4 is an addressing scheme that uses 32 bits in groups of 8 bits each to identify a device. Each address represents a number between 0 and 255 in each of the four bytes that represent it. Due to the 32-bit address size, the maximum number of IPv4 addresses that can be used is thus limited to 232, or approximately 4.3 billion addresses (4,294,967,296). For an addressing scheme that was simply intended to serve as a test of the networking concept, the possibility of its exhaustion was low. However, the reality of the exhaustion of available IPv4 addresses due to the astronomical increase in the number of people and devices on the Internet needing IPv4 addresses has given rise to the development of IPv6. IPv6 Structure IPv6 is a routable protocol that is responsible for addressing. , routing and fragmentation of packets by the ...... middle of paper ......ters. Devices that do not support IPv6 may only require a firmware upgrade with the new IPv6 stack if the equipment manufacturer offers it. Otherwise, such equipment will have to be completely replaced by new one supporting IPv6. The software used can support both IPv4 and IPv6. Most recent versions of major operating systems have deployed and supported the use of IPv6 in their operating systems. The Windows operating system, however, does not fully support IPv6 despite Microsoft's push for its adoption. Using the full colon of the IPv6 IP address in a browser's address bar will trick the operating system into thinking it is a reference to a drive. The most tedious solution is to use a domain translation in which the colons are replaced by hyphens and the characters ".ipv6.literal.net" must be appended to the end of the address..