With the exponential growth of internet services, IPv4, first released in 1981, is becoming even more outdated and irrelevant. The escalation of corporate intranets, cellular phones with internet access, technology webcasts, and file sharing have taken their toll, and there is a need for a greater number of IP addresses.

While IPv4 uses 34-bit addresses, IPv6 addresses are 128 bits long, and allow for more unique addresses. While the adoption of IPv6 won’t be immediate, it is necessary.

Running IPv6 compares and contrasts IPv6 to IPv4, and discusses the advantages and disadvantages of each. Because most major software and hardware vendors have (or will) adopt IPv6, the focus of this book is to leverage your existing knowledge of IPv4 and to help you apply that knowledge to the newer protocol. This book explains how to install and operate the IPv6 protocol for Windows XP, Mac OS X, FreeBSD, Red Hat Linux, and Cisco routers. The book also covers DNS and BIND, Zebra, Apache 2, and Sendmail.

Iljitsch is a freelance network specialist and writer in the Netherlands. He is the author of BGPand is active within the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF), especially within the Multihoming in IPv6 (multi6) working group.