What are the main differences between IPv4 and IPv6?

O IP (Internet Protocol), created in the late 70s, is the communication protocol used on the internet, and on the private networks that we see today in companies or even in homes. It aims to enable the interconnection of two or more devices on the network.

The IP protocol has an addressing scheme similar to phone numbers. Just like any phone in the world, it is unique (where the DDD is the country code), each computer connected to a network has a unique number, which is called an "IP address" or IP number. This number is used to identify the computer on the network.

The IP protocol in its current version- IPv4 it is already quite old and has had many problems, the most serious of which are security flaws, which are periodically discovered and some problems have no solution. However, the new generation of the IP protocol, the IPv6, aims to solve most of the internet security problems today, inherited precisely from the old-fashioned IPv4 project.

The main differences between IPv4 and IPv6:

IPv4 (ex: 192.168.100.20)

• The addresses are 32 bits (4 bytes) in size and this theoretically allows the creation of up to 4.294.967.296 Adresses.
• Address records in DNS map device names to IPv4 addresses
• It can be configured manually or by DHCP.
• Both routers and sending machines fragment packets.
• ARP uses ARP broadcast requests to resolve IP addresses to MAC (Hardware) addresses.
• Supports an 576-byte (fragmented) packet size.

IPv6 (ex: FF00:4502:0:0:0:0:0:42)

• The addresses have 128 bits (16 bytes) in size with about 340.282.366.920.938.463.463.374.607.431.768.211.456, Adresses
• Address records in DNS map device names to IPv6 addresses.
• It does not require manual or DHCP configuration.
• Routers do not support packet fragmentation. The sending machines do packet fragmentation.
• Supports 1280-byte packet size (without fragmentation).

IPv6 will probably be a headache for hackers criminals.