IPv6 Know-How: The New Header Format

Exploring the IPv6 packet header.

By Enterprise Networking Planet Staff | Jul 13, 2011
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Telecom Reseller explores the rise of IPv6 in this article, taking a look at the new header format in greater detail. Information conveyed between sender and receiver are either control information or user information.

The control information, or protocol control information provides the background details that are required to get the data from point A to point B, and is contained in a packet header, which is examined at every stop between sender and receiver.

"Many of the fields within the IPv4 header were designated in the 1970s when the original Internet Protocol was under development, and a time when the protocol was being designed for military and government communications, not business and electronic commerce. Thus, many of the IPv4 fields were currently obsolete, and only adding to the packet overhead. As a result, the IPv4 header with 12 fields and 20 octets in length (an octet is an 8-bit byte), was simplified to an IPv6 header containing eight fields and 40 octets in length (recall from our last installment that the IPv6 addresses are 16 octets (128 bits) each, which accounts for the vast majority of the increase in IPv6 header length over its IPv4 predecessor)”

Read the Full Story at Telecom Reseller

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