IPv6

What is IPv6

IPv6 is a version of the Internet Protocol (IP) that is designed to succeed Internet Protocol version 4 (IPv4). The reason to switch to IPv6 is the shortage of IPv4 numbers. The most important feature of IPv6 is a much larger address space than in IPv4. The length of an IPv6 address is 128 bits, compared to 32 bits in IPv4. The address space therefore supports 2¹²⁸ (or approximately 340 undecillion or 3.4×10³⁸) addresses.

When do we need IPv6

Februari 2011 IANA (Global IP registrar) ran out of IPv4 space to hand out to the RIRs (Regional IP Registrars). The fist RIR to ran out of IPv4 numbers was APNIC (Asia/Pacific/Australia) in april 2011. Ripe (Europe) is expected to be the next to run out of IPv4 space (expected september 2011). When a RIR runs out of space ISPs within their region cannot obtain new IPv4-addresses anymore, so their stack will run out too. From that point on ISPs has to take countermeasures for their customers to deliver internetconnectivity over IPv6. Some ISPs would deliver their services over NATted IPv4, but in a few years all ISPs has to deliver IPv6 nativly.

For the customers who have a working internetconnection right now, don't worry, you IPv4 address will not disappear on short term.More likely is that your connection will be upgraded somewhere in time to dual-stack (IPv4+IPv6). This may still take years for that to happen.

Why do I want to use IPv6

As IPv4 has no future anymore and there is no doubt IPv6 is the next generation IP protocol, why not. The problem is ISP's are very slow in delivering IPv6 to their customers and hardware vendors are even slower, even when most hardware can do IPv6, the software is not ready for IPv6.

Why does the WDLXTV support IPv6

As WD is not supporting IPv6, we have to. We need to support the future IP protocol as we want our WD-player to last longer then the IPv4 protocol.

Sources: [1]