HTTP/2, the first update to HTTP in 16 years, has been finalized

[Kavawuvi 6,076]

Oh wow, I had no idea about that. I always thought there was some sort of abstraction layer that made them semi-interoperable with additional nodes. I mean, they probably exist in special applications, but I didn't know they weren't in public use.

The main issue is that an IPv4 address is only 32 bits. An IPv6 address is 128 bits. You can translate an IPv4 address to an equivalent IPv6 address by adding 96 zero bits. There's a site that does it: https://www.ultratools.com/tools/ipv4toipv6

However, you can't make an IPv6 address an IPv4 address, because subtracting 96 bits would give you a completely different IP. Therefore, they cannot communicate directly. The only compromise is using both, unfortunately.

 

edit: Also, I wanted to experiment turning off IPv4 and seeing what happens. Turns out a lot of the Internet doesn't have IPv6 support like twitch.tv or Steam or AOL or most of the search results for "what is my IP" on Google or Imgur, or they only somewhat support it (broken images) like Mozilla's site. Some sites do support it, but a lot of services and features are IPv4 only, like Apple's App store, or Microsoft's Hotmail. Most of Google's services support it (searching, YouTube, Gmail, Google DNS, etc.). It's not used very much, as I said.

Edited February 19, 2015 by 002

[nil 81]

Well Google and Mozilla are going to conform pretty quickly, and they can drive their web browser adoption pretty easily. Major websites will want to get on this, Google being no exception. IPv6 adoption on the other hand relies on services, ISPs, and a bunch of user software.

[Solaris 3,511]

The main issue is that an IPv4 address is only 32 bits. An IPv6 address is 128 bits. You can translate an IPv4 address to an equivalent IPv6 address by adding 96 zero bits. There's a site that does it: https://www.ultratools.com/tools/ipv4toipv6

However, you can't make an IPv6 address an IPv4 address, because subtracting 96 bits would give you a completely different IP. Therefore, they cannot communicate directly. The only compromise is using both, unfortunately.

 

edit: Also, I wanted to experiment turning off IPv4 and seeing what happens. Turns out a lot of the Internet doesn't have IPv6 support like twitch.tv or Steam or AOL or most of the search results for "what is my IP" on Google or Imgur, or they only somewhat support it (broken images) like Mozilla's site. Some sites do support it, but a lot of services and features are IPv4 only, like Apple's App store, or Microsoft's Hotmail. Most of Google's services support it (searching, YouTube, Gmail, Google DNS, etc.). It's not used very much, as I said.

https://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc2545

 

In terms of routing information, the most significant difference between IPv6 and IPv4 (for which BGP was originally designed) is the fact that IPv6 introduces scoped unicast addresses and defines particular situations when a particular address scope must be used. This document concerns itself essentially with the necessary rules to accommodate IPv6 address scope requirements.

 

Through the grapevine, a lot of people higher up on the network chain than I am are saying that BGP only half-works in large scale setups where routers are gateways for the internet (aka ISPs). I'm sure this is why IPv6 isn't widely implemented, as there's no effective half-way to do a full conversion. Not every consumer's modem, router or NIC can support IPv6 either, so it's a poorly designed protocol that relied on a lot of contributing factors.

 

I'll drop this here though.

 

http://www.tribler.org/IPv8/