IPv6, may I have your address please?
Address Formula
The important thing to remember about mathematics is not to be frightened - Richard Dawkins
Today I was spending time with IPv6 and it's attributes. I can go into some deep features, but let's start with something simple today, though important.
The IPv6 formula for the address is:
48-bit prefix from an upstream router + 16-bit subnet ID from the default gateway + 64-bit MAC = 128-bit IPv6 address
Simple enough, but the interesting part is the 48-bit prefix. This comes from above upstream router, of which those 48-bits come from the Regional Internet Registries (where there are 5 Regions; North America, Asia-Pacific, Latin America and Africa) with the next 16-bits making up the subnet ID from who ever is setting up the gateway. This is so much different than IPv4 which basically is managed entirely by the network engineer once the basic IPv4 is assigned to an organization.
One item to note is that to reach the Internet, you will need this global unicast address, so get those firewalls going to protect the network. Just one item that is interesting about IPv6.
