Tell me more ×
Super User is a question and answer site for computer enthusiasts and power users. It's 100% free, no registration required.
up vote 12 down vote favorite

I know that IPv6 is the future because there is only 4 billion IPv4 address, but on a home network, you are not going to have 4 billion users. So are there any other benefits that would make IPv6 on a home network better than using IPv4?

share|improve this question
7  
But with IPv4 you can't give all of your kitchen appliances billions of IP addresses! – Phoshi Oct 19 '09 at 15:36
'cause my fridge has a twitter habit and gets very very upset if it can't tweet to all the neighbor fridges... – quack quixote Dec 13 '09 at 22:07

7 Answers

up vote 2 down vote accepted

No, there is not any benefit to using IPv6 at home.

Here is a relevant question: http://superuser.com/questions/29606/what-interesting-uses-for-ipv6-are-out-there

share|improve this answer
Not true for all systems. Windows 7 Homegroups uses it (as mentioned in the link). – jdh Jan 5 at 15:12
up vote 18 down vote

Yes, there is a benefit to using IPv6 at home. The main one is education, i.e. you will gain experience at administering an IPv6 network that you can put on your resume. In about two years from now, sometime in 2011, the world will run out of IPv4 addresses and there will be a surge in demand for IPv6 networking, and that includes a demand for people experienced in administering IPv6.

share|improve this answer
4  
...and we're out. – Ava Gailliot Apr 27 '11 at 17:30
Heh. Oddly enough now in 2012 a phase-out plan has begun for IPv4 it seems: tools.ietf.org/id/… – Earlz Mar 28 '12 at 21:03
I don't think education is what he meant ;p. He surely meant technical advantages. – 90h Feb 11 at 4:07
IPv6 was not designed to have tecnnical advantages. It was designed to solve a fundamental problem with the total number of available addresses. At the time it was first implemented, IPv6 did have technical advantages over IPv4, but over the years people have implemented almost all of those advantages with IPv4 as well. But the fundamental issue of not enough IP addresses remains. Because of this IPv6 WILL be universally deployed. It is only a question of how quickly will it reach the tipping point where it becomes the default. – Michael Dillon Feb 12 at 7:39
up vote 8 down vote

I use it to be able to reach all my machines from outside without doing anything special.

You could also use the improved multicast support to stream data in a much more efficient way.

IPv6 also removes a checksum so you could perhaps notice a small improvement in performance, but most likely not.

I try to use IPv6 whenever possible, mostly because it's a weee bit more nerdy... :)

share|improve this answer
We've noticed the very slight improvement in performance on large file transfers internally. – Brian Knoblauch Dec 16 '09 at 12:48
up vote 4 down vote

Windows 7 Homegroup requires IPv6

share|improve this answer
Well, it sort of does... – martineau Jan 5 at 14:53
Not sure why you would say "sort of", as the link seems to state that Homegroup 'absolutely' requires IPv6 (along with some tribulations about router capabilities of passing IPv6 (and another homegroup requirement of time sync)). – jdh Jan 5 at 15:10
up vote 1 down vote

When you run a server from home.... running IPv6 makes it easier... no need for static NAT translation as long as double NAT or DS-Lite is not used to connect your IPv4 host because static NAT translation will no longer be possible... So only IPv6 will allow you to run a Server at home...

I have an IPv6 Server at home which is not always online but I use it for testing. It tooks me a minute to add the DNS record at my ISP (OVH) and that's it!

Fred

share|improve this answer
up vote 0 down vote

Well the technical benefits of ipv6 over ipv4 is that it's natively encrypted, no broadcasting - it's all either multi-cast or unicast.

It has anycast addresses to map the nearby device network topology and geocast to have regionally identifiable addressing based on where you live in the world.

It's a hierarchical based addressing as opposed to ipv4's seemingly random addressing system where the loopback address knocks out an entire class A address block, and that knocks out about more than a million addresses where as ipv6 loopback is just one address.

Another technical benefit of ipv6 over 4 is that there are smaller DNS tables and routing tables, because routing is done regionally where the first block of numbers are your continent code, then country, then ISP, then 16 bits for your network, and the last 64 would be MAC address - so this allows for more hierarchical routing and less latency, when it's used globally.

share|improve this answer
up vote -1 down vote

I believe that multicast support will be a real advantage.

Real-time content providers (for example internet radios/TVs) will be able to save a lot on bandwidth. Or imagine a videoconferencing with Skype, Skype could utilize multicast and as a result it could send better quality video to any number of participants.

Just Imagine a torrent client with multicast support! One seeder could send the same piece of information to 1000 leechers at the same time while not using more bandwidth then it would take to send it to one!

I really really hope multicast gets implemented and deployed properly.

share|improve this answer

Your Answer

 
discard

By posting your answer, you agree to the privacy policy and terms of service.

Not the answer you're looking for? Browse other questions tagged or ask your own question.