Executive Summary
Internet Protocol (IP) is a set of rules governing the format of data transferred between computers over the internet or any local area network. The existing protocol supporting the internet today – Internet Protocol Version 4 (IPv4) – provides the world with roughly 4 billion IP addresses, inherently limiting the number of devices that can have a unique, globally routable address on the internet. While the Information Technology (IT) community has come up with workarounds to address this shortage in the IPv4 environment, the adoption and deployment of Internet Protocol Version 6 (IPv6) which has an exponentially large number of IP addresses is the only long-term solution to this problem. The wide-scale implementation of IPv6 in existing and newer networks is essential to the continued growth of the Internet and the development of novel applications that can leverage the increase in mobile internet
connectivity.
