IPv6 Address Space

IPv6 has much larger address space available compared to IPv4. IPv6 uses 128 bit address space while IPv4 uses just 32 bit address space. This increase in address space allows expansion and flexibility in allocating addresses along with making routing easier and cleaner due to hierarchical addressing. As explained in previous video IPv6 also allows auto-configuration for addressing.

In this video I have explained the intricacies of IPv6 addresses, how to write IPv6 address and how these addresses can be abbreviated. IPv6 addresses are written as eight groups of four hexadecimal digits separated by colon ":" e.g.

2001:0db0:0000:82a1:0000:0000:0000:1234

For shortening this address all the leading zeros can be omitted and one consecutive group of zeros can be replaced with (::). Thus the above address is same as

2001:0db0:0:82a1::1234

Note that only one group of zeros can be replaced by double colons.

This IPv6 video tutorial explains such other intricacies for IPv6 address structures.

The version of IP currently being used on the internet is IPv4 and is around for 20 years. IPv4 is remarkably resilient in spite of its age, but it is beginning to have problems. IPv6 has much larger address space than IPv4. IPv6 uses 128bit address as compared to just 32bit address space used by IPv4. The new address space thus supports 2¹²⁸ addresses. This expansion eliminates NATing, gives flexibility in allocating addresses and routing. The other important features implemented by IPv6 include stateless auto-configuration, network renumbering with router announcements, standard subnet size, mandatory security at network layer etc. As of now IPv6 is implemented on all major operating systems in use in commercial, business, and home consumer environments.

IPv6-101 video series on SecurityTube.net will start with the basic introduction to IPv6 protocol. This video series will serve as a IPv6 tutorial for beginners and will help as a quick reference for advanced users. I will try to add more and more practical examples and real life scenarios in IPv6 tutorial video series along with the theoretical explanation.

Amit Vartak, 27 is working in wired and wireless security fields since last 3-4 years. His current area of interest includes IEEE 802.11 (Wi-Fi) suite of protocols, vulnerabilities in these protocols and countermeasure for those vulnerabilities. Working on cutting edge tools and technology always keeps him busy. He has contributed from concept level to final prototyping for the presentations in Defcon 2007 (The Emperor Has No Cloak - WEP Cloaking Exposed) and Toorcon 2007 (Caffe latte attack). He holds 2 patents with USPTO (current status: Patent Pending) and a few papers in IEEE journals on wireless protocol vulnerabilities. Prior to this, he was working on MEMS (Micro Electro Mechanical Systems) and has published a few papers in SPIE and ICMAT. (Yeah… kindda orthogonal fields… but technology really doesn’t limit the talent :) He did his masters in Electrical Engineering from one of the premier institutes in India, Indian Institute of Technology, Bombay (IIT-Bombay) and his under graduation, from University of Mumbai in Electronics and Telecommunication Engineering. He is currently working with AirTight Networks Inc. as a team lead in technology group since last 3 years.You can get in touch with him at amitcv[at]gmail[dot]com