How Will Moving to IPv6 Enhance the Security of the Internet?

If you are the average person that uses the internet, then you may have some vague notion of what an IP address is or maybe you haven't heard of it at all. If that is the case then you are less likely to know the difference between IPv4 and IPv6 and why we are switching from one to the other. It's ok that you do not know since even most people in tech do not know why. But before we go into the security implications of why the switch to IPv6 is important, we will give you a quick explanation of what it is and how you use it every day when you surf the internet.

The internet is nothing but a huge group of computers put together through wires. In other words it is one huge network. There are a couple of central points to the network but what makes up most of what you use on the internet is called servers. Your computer is the endpoint and is known as a node on the network. Your ISP, the people you pay every month for access to the internet, provide you with what is called an IP address. This IP address is how the other computers and servers on the network are able to find you. If you are on Windows and you use the command line to type in ipconfig, you will see the IP address that is assigned to that computer. If you are connected directly to the modem, you will see the address that the ISP gave you. If you are connected to the internet through the use of a router, you will see the IP address that the router gave you. The router itself has the IP address that the ISP provides.

The IP address that you have now is known as IPv4. We are running out of those addresses. When the people who first created the ideal of IP addresses thought of the system, they never imagined that the internet would be as big as it is now. They couldn't comprehend that the IP addresses would need to account for mobile phones, TVs, and other devices that connect to the internet. So a new standard was made, IPv6. This was to accommodate the many new devices that are available now.

The big security difference that IPv6 will have over IPv4 is that it has a mandatory IPSec installed into it. IPSec stands for Internet Protocol Security. It not only encrypts and decrypts each data packet in the stream; it also authenticates each party that is sending the traffic. In the IPv4 standard, none of this was mandatory and we paid for it by the way that security is on the internet now.

IPv6 is a big move that we are making when it comes to the internet. And hopefully the extra security that it brings will be of benefit as well.

Read Lee Ives' blog where you will learn more on internet security from his daily posts.