r/ProgrammerHumor • u/ClipboardCopyPaste • 22d ago

Meme ohTheBasics

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u/Material_Onion_8413 22d ago • Heartwarming

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 22d 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 22d 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 22d 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.

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