Question

Compare and contrast IPv4 vs. IPv6.

Answer 1

Feature	IPv4	IPv6
Address Length	32 bits (approximately 4.3 billion addresses)	128 bits (approximately 340 undecillion addresses)
Address Notation	Dotted-decimal (e.g., 192.168.1.1)	Hexadecimal with colons (e.g., 2001:0db8:85a3:0000:0000:8a2e:0370:7334)
Address Configuration	Manual or DHCP	Stateless autoconfiguration, DHCPv6
Header Length	Variable (20 to 60 bytes)	Fixed at 40 bytes
Header Checksum	Included (recalculated at each hop)	Removed (reliant on link-layer checksum)
Security and Encryption	Requires additional IPsec layer	Built-in support for IPsec
NAT (Network Address Translation)	Commonly used	Discouraged due to abundant addresses
Backward Compatibility	Transition mechanisms like dual-stack and tunneling	Coexistence during transition period
Deployment Status	Widely used with address exhaustion issues	Increasing adoption for future scalability