3Com Switch 8800 Advanced Software V5 Configuration Guide

212 CHAPTER 23: IPV6 BASICS CONFIGURATION
Figure 63 Comparison between IPv4 packet header format and basic IPv6 packet header
format
Adequate address space
The source and destination IPv6 addresses are both 128 bits (16 bytes) long. IPv6
can provide 3.4 x 10
38
addresses to completely meet the requirements of
hierarchical address division as well as allocation of public and private addresses.
Hierarchical address structure
IPv6 adopts the hierarchical address structure to quicken route search and reduce
the system source occupied by the IPv6 routing table by means of route
aggregation.
Automatic address configuration
To simplify the host configuration, IPv6 supports stateful and stateless address
configuration.
■ Stateful address configuration means that a host acquires an IPv6 address and
related information from a server (for example, DHCP server).
■ Stateless address configuration means that a host automatically configures an
IPv6 address and related information on basis of its own link-layer address and
the prefix information advertised by the router.
In addition, a host can generate a link-local address on basis of its own link-layer
address and the default prefix (FE80::/64) to communicate with other hosts on the
link.
Built-in security
IPv6 uses IPSec as its standard extension header to provide end-to-end security.
This feature provides a standard for network security solutions and improves the
interoperability between different IPv6 applications.
QoS support
The Flow Label field in the IPv6 header allows the device to label packets in a flow
and provide special handling for these packets.
Ver
0113
Traffic
class
Flow label
Payload length
Next
header
Hop limit
Source address (128 bits)
Destination address (128 bits)
3115 23
Ver HL ToS Total length
0733115 23
Identification Fragment offsetF
TTL Protocol Header checksum
Source address (32 bits)
Destination address (32 bits)
Options Padding
IPv4 header
Basic IPv 6 header