The Internet Protocol delivers packets sent to a unicast address to that specific interface.Īn anycast address is assigned to a group of interfaces, usually belonging to different nodes. Ī unicast address identifies a single network interface. IPv6 addresses are classified by the primary addressing and routing methodologies common in networking: unicast addressing, anycast addressing, and multicast addressing. Therefore, in comparison, IPv6 has a vastly enlarged address space. In contrast to IPv4, which defined an IP address as a 32-bit value, IPv6 addresses have a size of 128 bits.
IPv6 is the successor to the first addressing infrastructure of the Internet, Internet Protocol version 4 (IPv4). The IP address of the destination is used to make decisions about routing IP packets to other networks. IP addresses are included in the packet header to indicate the source and the destination of each packet. Decomposition of an IPv6 address into its binary formĪn Internet Protocol Version 6 address ( IPv6 address) is a numeric label that is used to identify and locate a network interface of a computer or a network node participating in a computer network using IPv6.
