Howard Hudson - Week 8 - IPv6

The primary driver for developing a replacement for IPv4 was the dwindling pool of addresses. The Internet Engineering Task Force published RFC2460 in December 1998, which defined IPv6. Instead of 32-bit addresses, IPv6 was build with a 128-bit address field.

IPv6 Header Format

Theoretically, 340 undecillion (340,282,366,920,938,463,463,374,607,431,768,211,456) is the number of available IPv6 addresses. According to the 2018 IoT report, there are 17 billion devices and 7 billion IoT devices in use. (Lueth, 2018). If we add 24 billion devices each year for 100 years, the sum of devices would only reach 240 billion. IPv6 provides several advantages over IPv4 such as Encapsulating Security Payload, authentication, hopping, source node fragmentation, and Stateless Address Autoconfiguration.

The Encapsulating Security Payload protocol ensures confidentiality of shared data by providing encryption and decryption through a shared key (Finjan, 2017). An Authentication Header can be used to validate data by providing connectionless integrity and data origin authentication for IP datagrams by verifying the originating node that sent a packet (Kent, 2015; Davies, 2012). The Hop-by-Hop Options Extension header delivers data to each hop on the path while in-route to its destination. As well, the data is examined by every node that the packet traverses (Baker & Bonica, 2016). Exclusive to a source node, a Fragment Header is used by an IPv6 source to send a packet that is too large to fit in the maximum transmission unit [in a single transmission] (Deering & Hinden, 2017). Statefull configuration is still available by Dynamic Host Configuration Protocol for IPv6, which enables a host to request a specific IPv6 address, however, Stateless Address Autoconfiguration is supported. Stateless Address Autoconfiguration automatically generates global IPv6 addresses, which enables devices to connect to a network (Cisco Systems, 2012; Kottapalli, 2018).

Resources

Baker, F., & Bonica, R. (2016, March 16). IPv6 Hop-by-Hop Options Extension Header draft-ietf-6man-hbh-header-handling-03. Retrieved January 30, 2019, from https://tools.ietf.org/id/draft-ietf-6man-hbh-header-handling-03.txt

Cisco Systems, Inc. (2012, July 31). IPv6 Configuration Guide, Cisco IOS Release 15.2M&T - IPv6 Stateless Autoconfiguration [Support]. Retrieved January 30, 2019, from https://www.cisco.com/c/en/us/td/docs/ios-xml/ios/ipv6/configuration/15-2mt/ip6-15-2mt-book/ip6-statlss-auto.html

Davies, J. (2012, June 15). Understanding the IPv6 Header. Retrieved January 30, 2019, from https://www.microsoftpressstore.com/articles/article.aspx?p=2225063&seqNum=4

Deering, S., & Hinden, R. (2017, July). Internet Protocol, Version 6 (IPv6) Specification. Retrieved January 30, 2019, from https://tools.ietf.org/pdf/rfc8200.pdf

Finjan. (2017, March 06). Encapsulating Security Protocol (ESP). Retrieved January 30, 2019, from https://blog.finjan.com/encapsulating-security-protocol/

Kent, S. (2015, December). IP Authentication Header. Retrieved January 30, 2019, from https://www.ietf.org/rfc/rfc4302.txt

Kottapalli, N. (2018, November 6). IPv6 Stateless Prefix Management draft-naveen-slaac-prefix-management-00. Retrieved January 30, 2019, from https://tools.ietf.org/html/draft-naveen-slaac-prefix-management-00

Lueth, K. L. (2018, August 8). State of the IoT 2018: Number of IoT devices now at 7B – Market accelerating. Retrieved January 30, 2019, from https://iot-analytics.com/state-of-the-iot-update-q1-q2-2018-number-of-iot-devices-now-7b/

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