Table 1 IPv4 and IPv6 comparison

Address space (source and destination address)

32 bits or 4 bytes length size of address

128 bits or 16 bytes length size of address

Checksum

Includes checksum which slows the process due to examine the IP header at each traverse router

dose not include checksum technique, which is replaced by an upper layer protocol and link layer technologies for error control and provide checksum mechanism

Header options

Header includes option

Any optional data moved to extension header

length of IP header

20–60 depending on IP option

Fixed length, which is 60 bytes and did not include IP header option

Self-configuration

Manual or use DHCP based IP configuration

Auto-configuration capability

Broadcast technique

Used broadcast to transfer the address to all nodes on its networks

Multi-cast address (link-local scope) used

Fragmentation

Applied by host and router (destination) and used the following fields for fragmentation ID, flag and offset

Just applied by the source

Mobility

Mobile IPv4 features used

Mobile IPv6 and its improvements for efficient hand-off

Map addresses

Use node addresses recorded in dynamic network services (DNS) for map node names

Use AAAA (Quad A) record in Domain Name System (DNS) to map node names to IPv6 addresses

Packet identification

Not supported

Use packets flow label field

Security

IPsec header used as a optionally service for protecting the packets

Compulsory use IPsec for safe data and control the packet

Lifetime of datagram

Used time to live (TTL) which is used to determine the lifetime of datagram on the network

Instead of TTL mechanism, hope limit used to determine the limit number of routers that must cross by the packet before it considered an invalid packet.