HP 6125XLG R2306-HP 6125XLG Blade Switch Layer 3 - IP Services Configuration G - Page 125

Configuring basic IPv6 settings Overview IPv6, also called IP next generation (IPng), was designed by the IETF as the successor to IPv4. One significant difference between IPv6 and IPv4 is that IPv6 increases the IP address size from 32 bits to 128 bits. IPv6 features Simplified header format IPv6 removes several IPv4 header fields or moves them to the IPv6 extension headers to reduce the length of the basic IPv6 packet header. The basic IPv6 packet header has a fixed length of 40 bytes to simplify IPv6 packet handling and improve forwarding efficiency. Although the IPv6 address size is four times the IPv4 address size, the basic IPv6 packet header size is only twice the size of the option-less IPv4 packet header. Figure 51 IPv4 packet header format and basic IPv6 packet header format Larger address space IPv6 can provide 3.4 x 1038 addresses to meet the requirements of hierarchical address assignment for both public and private networks. Hierarchical address structure IPv6 uses a hierarchical address structure to speed up route lookup and reduce the IPv6 routing table size through route aggregation. Address autoconfiguration To simplify host configuration, IPv6 supports stateful and stateless address autoconfiguration. 117