IPv6 - The Network Protocol of the Future

IPv6 has benefitted from 10 years of development by the IETF. The core standards have been stable for many years and are increasingly supported as a part of standard products and service offerings. The gradual transition from IPv4 towards majority IPv6 deployment will take many years and IPv4 may never itself be phased-out completely. In the meantime, the two protocols can co-exist and be used together in various ways. This paper suggests that IPv6 will ultimately succeed the current version, IPv4, to become the dominant version of IP used in the Internet.