Should I enable IPv6 on my home router? "Must-see: Advantages of enabling IPV6 on your home router"

php editor Banana brings you answers to questions about whether IPv6 should be enabled on home routers. With the rapid development of the Internet, IPv6, as the next generation Internet protocol, has more IP address resources and better network performance. However, for home users, there may be some doubts about whether to turn on IPv6. This article will give you a detailed introduction to the advantages of turning on IPv6 on your home router and help you make wise decisions.

IPv4 is exhausted, IPv6 is urgently needed, but is this upgrade just a passive change? What does IPv6 mean to the general public? How much change can the comprehensive upgrade of IPv6 bring to our network?

01

Large-scale IPv6 transformation is about to be realized

Recently, the General Office of the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology and the General Office of the State Administration of Radio and Television issued a notice proposing to promote the Internet TV business IPv6 transformation requirements. China Mobile, Alibaba Cloud, Tencent Cloud, Baidu Cloud, JD Cloud, Huawei Cloud and Wangsu Technology need to carry out IPv6 transformation of the content distribution network (CDN) related to Internet TV business. By the end of 2020, the service capability of Internet TV services based on IPv6 protocol will reach more than 85% of IPv4, and the acceleration performance of Internet TV services based on IPv6 protocol will also reach more than 85% of IPv4. This move aims to promote the development of Internet TV business and improve user experience.

Equivalent to the end of this year, more than 80% of public cloud platforms will complete IPv6 transformation. Today, when IPv4 is increasingly exhausted, is it necessary to promote IPv6 so quickly? For the general public, what is the significance of such a change?

In fact, in addition to public cloud operators actively promoting IPv6 upgrades, major Internet platforms and application software are actively promoting IPv6 application processes. Of course, in terms of experience, I am afraid it is not that cute at the moment.

Tested ipv6.baidu.com successfully, while Taobao claims to support IPv6, Youku claims to support IPv6...supported on many platforms and applications Today is IPv6. Friends of Master Titanium, have you ever experienced IPv6? Before talking about how to experience IPv6, let’s first talk about the differences between IPv6 and IPv4!

02

Even street lights can have independent IP

There are tens of billions of devices in the world, but only more than 4 billion addresses. Since China's Internet started late, only 290 million IPs were allocated, so they are shared. It's okay to access the Internet normally, but it becomes very difficult to access a certain Internet device from the public network, such as checking your home camera or remotely controlling your computer. After switching to IPv6, each device can have an independent IP address. If coupled with the 5G network, each car, street light, trash can, and fire hydrant can have an independent IP address. IPv6’s rich addresses make the “Internet of Things” possible.

IPv6 uses 128 bits for IPv6 address length, allowing 3.402823669 × 10 unique addresses. To understand the scale involved, consider the entire size. As you can see from these numbers, using IPv6 can provide billions of addresses for everyone and ensure that any device that must connect to the Internet has a unique IP address. A conservative estimate of IPv6's actual assignable addresses is that more than 1,000 addresses can be assigned per square meter of the entire earth. It is really not casual to assign an IP address to every grain of sand in the world.

In the coming era of the Internet of Things, more IP addresses are naturally very necessary, but for ordinary users, this invisible address does not seem to make much sense. I am afraid that people are more concerned about it. "Faster transfer speed".

IPv6 uses a fixed header, which does not carry a bunch of lengthy data like IPv4. The short header improves the efficiency of network data forwarding. And because IPv6 has a smaller routing table and stronger aggregation capabilities, it ensures a shorter data forwarding path and greatly improves forwarding efficiency. IPv6 also eliminates most of the address conflict problems common in IPv4 and provides devices with More streamlined connectivity and communication.

In addition to the first two advantages, "higher security" is the key to the unswerving promotion of IPv6 across the entire network. In IPv6, IPSec, as the main protocol, is one of the factors that ensures that IPv6 provides better security than IPv4. Pv6 ensures that there are end-to-end security mechanisms that provide authentication and encryption capabilities to all applications, thereby eliminating the need for integrated support for these capabilities within the applications themselves. An added benefit of using the same security mechanism for all applications is that setting and managing security policies becomes simpler. IPv6 allows for complete end-to-end security, allowing the deployment of a new set of personalized services, such as mobile e-commerce services that rely on secure transactions.

In addition, features such as better quality of service (QoS), better multicast and anycast capabilities, and better support for mobile devices all determine that IPv6 is the future development trend. IPv4 has been successfully deployed around the world for many years, and its widespread use proves the success of IPv4 design. Therefore, IPv6 follows many of the same design points, making a smooth transition from IPv4 to IPv6 possible. Currently, there are many popular applications on the market that require IPv6, attracting more and more users to join the ranks of IPv6 users. However, IPv4 applications will still exist for some time in the future, and the transition from IPv4 to IPv6 must be a gradual process.

03

Should the router enable IPv6?

Now that Internet giants are all filtering to IPv6, how far is IPv6 from the general public? In fact, many routers already support IPv6 functions. If you want to see for yourself, you can open the back of the optical modem and see if there is the word IPv6. For routing, you can go to the product official website to check the relevant hardware parameters.

The prerequisite for using IPv6 is "non-NAT network" and whether NAT supports the IPv6 protocol. The simple way to judge the NAT network is: whether your router dials up by entering your account and password, or whether you can connect to the network directly without logging in after plugging in the optical modem. If you don’t need to enter a broadband account and password to access the Internet, it is probably a NAT network

If the IP automatically obtained by the router is the same as the public network you view If the IP is consistent, it means your network is not NATed.

When configuring IPv6 Internet access on the router, set the IPv6 network type to PPPoE dial-up for testing. If your home is NAT, you can also click Auto-detection and auto-configuration to try.

Since you choose PPPoE, you naturally need to fill in the broadband account and password. The option provided by Netgear here is to check the box to directly use the same account as IPv4.

The simple way to determine whether it is valid is to click on the computer's network card details. The previous IPv6 link prompt of unavailable now displays "internet" indicating that it is enabled. Click Details to see that the IPv6 address has been obtained and the relevant renewal time is displayed. By the way, the routing default IPv6 address is automatically assigned by DHCP.

In fact, in practical applications, friends more agree with "depending on the demand, turn it on if necessary, and turn it off if not needed." The operating system gives priority to accessing IPv6, but IPv6 of some application servers is still in the debugging stage. The effect of using IPv6 may not be as good as the more mature IPv4. IPv6 is not a must at present. It does not mean that if IPv6 is turned on, there will definitely be an IPv6 address. It requires the support of the broadband operator, optical modem support and correct configuration to be effective.

Obviously, every network upgrade is a comprehensive one, and it is impossible to say that the upgrade is complete once a certain link is upgraded. In fact, compared to the upgrade of fixed networks to IPv6, people think that mobile networks may be upgraded to IPv6 earlier.

Take Apple as an example. Apple has strongly promoted APP support for IPv6 only a few years ago. If it does not pass the review of this function, it cannot be put on the App Store. In the current mobile network scenario, the three major operators have already enabled dual-stack support for IPv4 and IPv6.

There are two aspects of mobile phone and network communication in the mobile network. One is the control plane, which is commonly known as the signaling plane. This level is invisible to the APP, and the other is the user plane, that is, the normal business data flow of the APP is Walk here. In the IPv4 only scenario, the mobile phone address can be obtained simply through signaling interaction on the control plane, but in the IPv4 IPv6 dual-stack scenario, the process has undergone some changes.

In fact, such network environment upgrades are often completed imperceptibly. Perhaps in the fourth quarter of this year, operators and router sellers will urge everyone to reset.

This article ends here. I hope it can help everyone. Should you enable ipv6 on your home router? "Must read: Advantages of enabling IPV6 on your home router." If you think this article is good, you can give it a like. oh! Don’t forget to check out our learning website when you’re in a bad mood!

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