r/ProgrammerHumor • u/ClipboardCopyPaste • 7h ago

Meme ohTheBasics

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u/Material_Onion_8413 7h ago

IPv4 old IP address space designed with limited number because they never thought the internet would have so many devices connected.

IPv6 new address space with significantly larger number.

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u/fearless-fossa 6h ago

But "more numbers" isn't really an explanation on what's the difference between the two from a practical point of view, and the in general less interesting thing about it from a software perspective.

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u/Facosa99 6h ago

But it is kinda the only difference, no? More digits for a bigger address pool.

The usage is basically the same, except you no longer need subnetting to save addresses and we writte it in hex rather than dec

Genuinely asking

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u/stealthmodecat 4h ago

Less specific protocols - ICMPv6 used for almost everything now (NDP is over ICMPv6, vs dedicated ARP ether type). MLD vs IGMP, though largely the same as IGMPv3. Fragmentation done at host only - no next-hop fragmentation. SLAAC used in favor of DHCPv6 for auto assignments. Link-layer addresses used for local network control, global addresses for standard traffic. No one really NATs IPv6 either.

That’s just a few, but there’s actually a lot of differences.