A Few Fundamental Features of IPv6 Internetworking

Cisco CRS-1 Backbone Core Router - Garion96

In this article select IPv6 concepts are presented to assist users in assessing the impact of expected changes to internetworking services.

The Internet is a worldwide system of computer networks in which users at any one computer can, if they have permission, get information from any other connected computer. Internet protocols are a support structure for networking computers.

Internet Protocol (IP) addressing can provide a connectionless service for end systems to communicate across one or more networks. Within this context, during the original development of this communication addressing scheme, the designers assumed that computer networks would be unreliable.

The current Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) sponsored IP specification, IP version six (IPv6), is anInternet Layer protocol -- as defined by the four layer Transmission Control Protocol/Internet Protocol (TCP/IP) model -- for packet-switched internetworking that provides end-to-end datagram transmission across multiple IP networks, and mandates IP Security (IPSec) protocol suite support as a foundational interoperability requirement.