Internet is the greatest revolutionary innovations of the twentieth century.

The Internet operates by transferring data in small packets that are independently routed across networks as specified by an international communications protocol known as the Internet Protocol. Internet is a global system of interconnected computer networks. It uses the standard Internet Protocol Suite (TCP/IP) to serve billions of users worldwide. The commonly used IP version is IP version 4 (IPv4). Several protocol suites (like Open System Interconnection) have been proposed over the years to replace IPv4, but not succeeded because of IPv4s large, and continually growing, installed base.

Todays Internet can interconnect a maximum of four billion systems only, which is a small number as compared to the projected systems on the Internet in this century. The IPv4 support 32 bit address, which is given to each machine on the net and unique. With 32 bits, a maximum of about four billion addresses are possible. More features were added to it to resolve the address problem and make it suitable for the next generation Internet. This new version was initially named IPng IP next generation. Now it is officially known as IPv6.The useful features of IPv4 were carried over in IPv6 and less useful features were dropped.IPv6 allows more numerical addresses, but switching from IPv4 to IPv6 is a difficult process. IPv6 supports 128-bit addresses. IPv6 addresses are four times the size of IPv4 addresses. IPv6 header is only twice the size of an IPv4 header. Header Format of IPv6

The fields of the IPv6 header are:

Version of IPv6: IP version number (4 bits). This fields value is 6 for IPv6 (and 4 for IPv4). Priority of IPv6: It is used to identify the desired delivery priority of this packet (4 bits). Flow Label of IPv6: It is mainly used to identify associated packets needing the same type of special handling. Payload Length of IPv6: Length of the payload (the portion of the packet following the header), in octets (16 bits). Next Header of IPv6: It identifies the type of header immediately following the IPv6 header; uses the same values as the IPv4 Protocol field, where applicable (8 bits). Hop Limit of IPv6: Specifies the maximum number of hops that a packet may take before it is discarded (8 bits). This value is set by the source and decremented by 1 by each node that forwards the packet; the packet is discarded if the Hop Limit reaches zero. Source Address of IPv6: IPv6 address of the originator of the packet (128 bits). Destination Address of IPv6: IPv6 address of the intended recipient(s) of the packet (128 bits).