Looking Ahead

You have, at this point, invested a sizeable portion of your time to learning not only the ins and outs of IP routing, but also the problems presented by the growing complexity of routing in modern IP networks. Many of the solutions to these problems involve working with (or around) the limitations of IPv4 and its associated routing protocols. The next chapter shows how the newest version of the IP protocol, IPv6, has been created with the lessons of IPv4 firmly in mind. When most people think of IPv6, they think primarily of 128-bit addresses and the alleviation of the IPv4 addressing limitations. As you will see, however, IPv6 is much more. It is designed for better security, better inter-AS qualities, and better support for multicasting, while at the same time eliminating many of the unnecessary complexities of IPv4.