Can somebody explain Internet Protocol version 6 like I'm five?

[Jonus01]

Before IPv6 came along, everyone used IPv4. Almost everyone still uses IPv4. When you connect to a computer over the internet, you don't connect to a name like "google.com". Using the domain name system (which works like a phonebook), your computer finds that google.com has the IP address 74.125.225.51. If you type that into your web browser, you will go to google, because in a very real sense, that address is where google lives.

Now, you see that there are four numbers there. Each number can range from 0 to 255. If you see how many possible numbers there are, you find that there are around 4 billion possible numbers like that.

This is a problem since there are more than 4 billion devices we want to connect to the internet. So people invented IPv6 which makes the number of possible addresses much larger. The number is so large that every person on earth could have a billion IPv6 addresses, and still almost all of the addresses would be left over.

There are many other reasons why IPv6 is nice, but I'm ignoring those to try to keep this simple.

[Network Surgeon]

Hi Jonus01

I believe that you have answered one of the main reason why IPv6 was created. To add to what you have mentioned to solve IPv4 exhaustion that's when NAT was introduced, but with IPv6 there is no need for NAT as it cater for 340 trillion IP Addresses.

Another major reason why IPv6 is important is it has the Stateless Auto configuration feature.

I hope this helps!

[Network Surgeon]

Hi Jonus01

I believe that you have answered one of the main reason why IPv6 was created. To add to what you have mentioned to solve IPv4 exhaustion that's when NAT was introduced, but with IPv6 there is no need for NAT as it cater for 340 trillion IP Addresses.

Another major reason why IPv6 is important is it has the Stateless Auto configuration feature.

I hope this helps!

[Fastlosi]

Good day.  From What I read and having gone through IPv6 training some years ago during the time when IPv6 was suppose to be the new flavor of Ice Cream, (around 2012), IPv6 has 340 undecillion, 282 decillion, 366 nonillion, 920 octillion, 938 septillion, 463 sextillion, 463 quintillion, 374 quadrillion, 607 trillion, 431 billion, 768 million, 211 thousand and 456.

I think we won't be running out of IPv6 Addresses any time soon.   I currently have over 4 billion IPv6 addresses allocated to myself since I started testing IPv6.  Funny, play hide and go seek with machines.  Lol.  find me if you can..

And yes... NAT/subnetting can be done, but, why (At this time)?????  It's Hard enough trying to remember hexadecimal numbers, let alone the ipv6 address of your machine.  (just kidding, actually, it's like remembering your ipv4 address but, longer.  Like a kid in a candy store, you want to remember.  lol)

IPv6 response times seem to be much faster too.  Maybe at the time when I was testing, there were not that many people using it.

Now that being said, this doesn't mean that at some time the numbers won't be excessively wasted.  Not to mention, who will manage the recycling of numbers.  I see a lot of numbers being wasted.  I don't need 4 billion numbers, but, at that same time,  my numbers will be recycled.  I have as many IPv6 numbers as there are IPv4 numbers world wide.  Go figure.. but, that was how they were allocated at the time. 

So with response to the question.  Hmm. Like you are 5.   So... there is a city and in that city are streets and on the streets are homes.  With IPv4, there are only so many homes that can fit on the streets and so many homes that can fit in the city.  Also in this situation, when you need to get mail, each home is suppose to have a mailing address, but, there are not enough mailing addresses so you and your neighbors have to share mailing addresses to receive mail. 

Now with IPv6, you still have the same situation, but, but the city is as large as the world and on each street, you have much more homes and there are more streets, and you no longer have to share mailing address.  

How's that.

Good Day...