(Contd...)

History of IP versions:
In May 1974, the Institute of Electrical and Electronic Engineers (IEEE) published a paper authored by Vint Cerf and Bob Kahn. The paper entitled “A Protocol for Packet Network Interconnection” described an internetworking protocol for sharing resources using packet-switching among the nodes. A central control component of this model was the “Transmission Control Program” (TCP) that incorporated both connection-oriented links and datagram services between hosts.

This Program later evolved into Transmission Control Protocol at the connection-oriented layer and the Internet Protocol at the internetworking (datagram) layer. The model became known informally as TCP/IP and formally as the Internet Protocol Suite.

IPv4:
The first major version of addressing structure, now referred to as Internet Protocol Version 4 (IPv4) is still the dominant protocol of the Internet. It is perceived that IPv4 is very robust and has been around for quite sometime, maybe around 25 years now but it has many limitations too. It has a limited addressing space of only 32 bits and the free pool of IPv4 addresses will be exhausted very soon. The IANA pool is likely to exhaust by October-2011. As far as India is concerned, the addresses are allocated by APNIC and currently we have approximately 18.5 million unique IPv4 addresses. It is estimated that within a year’s time about 60 million new addresses will be needed for various broadband and e-governance initiatives.

IPv6:
IPv6 is the next generation Internet Protocol with improvement over the initial version of IPv4. It is a scalable Internet technology with a potential to help the Internet reach 1.1 billion people of India. The role of IPv6 is not limited to Internet access alone but it is important in Defence, e-Governance and other crucial government projects. IP security in IPv6 provides end-to-end security implying that data is secured from the originating workstation through various routers of the Internet to the destined workstation. IPv6 has 128 bits as compared to the limited addressing space of only 32 bits in IPv4. The new Internet protocol will give practically unlimited addresses besides a host of new and advanced features for running the future communication networks.

The transition from IPv4 to IPv6 in the country is of critical concern in view of the changing ICT scenario in the country. The transition from IPv4 to IPv6 is not simply a protocol upgrade. It involves hardware changes also in addition to software. Moreover, it cannot be done overnight. It needs time; therefore both IPv4 and IPv6 will co-exist for many more years to come.

(Concluded...)

Mr. Rakesh Joshi

Joshi Enterprise

Manager, Joshi Enterprise
Dispur, India

Free Member, Joined :02/02/2007
No of Topics Posted : 122
Reply/Comments : 16