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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?

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  • 25
    But with IPv4 you can't give all of your kitchen appliances billions of IP addresses!
    – Phoshi
    Oct 19, 2009 at 15:36
  • 11
    '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, 2009 at 22:07
  • 1
    I don't believe your fridge has any twitter habit. Fridges have strong personality and never submit to addiction whatever it's drinking, smoking or tweeting. I think you invented it and invented it inaccurately, hence the mod down.
    – Andrew Smith
    Aug 10, 2014 at 13:44
  • IPv6 is stripping your privacy. You have one address for one device, so anyone can find what you do on the Internet. Unless you hide yourself. It may be faster in core networks, but to use it in your home it's just like using gold on your fridge power plug.
    – user481326
    Aug 9, 2015 at 13:12
  • seriously?! you peoples!
    – Xsmael
    Sep 9, 2016 at 22:54

7 Answers 7

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

Here is a relevant question: What interesting uses for IPv6 are out there?

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    Not true for all systems. Windows 7 Homegroups uses it (as mentioned in the link).
    – jdh
    Jan 5, 2013 at 15:12
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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.

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  • 45
    ...and we're out.
    – 에이바
    Apr 27, 2011 at 17:30
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    I don't think education is what he meant ;p. He surely meant technical advantages.
    – dyasta
    Feb 11, 2013 at 4:07
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    sometime in 2011, the world will run out of IPv4 addresses Now that 2015 is nigh, I wonder did the same that happened to "Peak Oil" also happen to "Peak IPv4"? (Writing from a NATted IPv4 machine)
    – Evgeniy Berezovsky
    Nov 19, 2014 at 0:35
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    This answer from 2009 says so much about the urgency of IPv6.
    – algal
    May 25, 2015 at 0:48
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    2015 Oct, I am still getting an IPv4 address for each of my VPS(at no extra charge). I also run IPv4 only at home, somehow I still can browse the internet just as others.
    – Reed
    Oct 6, 2015 at 19:12
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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... :)

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    We've noticed the very slight improvement in performance on large file transfers internally.
    – Brian Knoblauch
    Dec 16, 2009 at 12:48
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    what do you mean reach all my machines from outside without doing anything special. do you mean that you don't need public IPs or port forwarding ? you can just access them with their private ipv6 ? and can you access them from an ipv4 network ?
    – Xsmael
    Sep 9, 2016 at 23:00
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    All my IPv6-adresses are public so they could be reached from every IPv6 connected device out there. My firewall is configured to only allow ssh default. You need native IPv6 or an IPv6 tunnel since you can't reach them from an IPv4 only network.
    – Jimmy Hedman
    Sep 12, 2016 at 12:14
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Windows 7 Homegroup requires IPv6

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    Well, it sort of does...
    – martineau
    Jan 5, 2013 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, 2013 at 15:10
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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 took me a minute to add the DNS record at my ISP (OVH) and that's it!

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    "So only IPv6 will allow you to run a Server at home." - really? And routers with NAT allowing port forwarding don't count? Granted, this makes it a little more work with IPv4 to set up, but "only IPv6 will allow you to run a server at home" - hmmm.
    – Lars Nordin
    Nov 2, 2013 at 12:36
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    @LarsNordin some providers are out of IPv4 addresses and it's too expensive for them to buy more, some other ISPs simply never provided public v4 addresses to their customers. They use either CGN (Carrier Grade NAT) giving a private IPv4 to the customer, or DS-Lite (public IPv6 to customer and v4 is tunneled over v6 then passes through a CGN -- there's v4 only between the PC and the router at customer premises). In both cases, you have generally no way of configuring a port forwarding...
    – Ale
    Apr 25, 2017 at 0:05
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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.

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Hmm sorry ipv4 was hierarchical hence supernetting and sub netting however massive amounts were wasted in the Class A range and there is huge loss in the internal addresses aka RFC 1918 address system

Most times NAT is needed and this wasn't always great for people

IPv6 is also hierarchical but with 128 bit address space over the 32 bit address space there is trillions of addresses to use. Also as stated there is no broadcast so some security is there as in nodes wont respond within a subnet to give their address. BIG plus although on a DES level of 56 bit is that each and every PACKET of IPv6 is and has inbuilt encryption which improves security immensely although dig a bit there is still security issues somewhat but much vastly better than IPv4 on the main. NAT is not required, Encryption at the packet level built in ..IPv6 is the only way to go..just people need to get to grips with the AAAA or quad A servers system of DNS ..then once the providers move to this it should be good for all. Personally I wish the telecoms for mobile phones would move to IPV6 for stated security reasons mentioned. IPv4 will go...and IPv6 is established as a replacement protocol.

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  • Your statement that IP is hierarchical is wrong. It is not. RFC 791 1.2 specifies the scope as being The internet protocol is specifically limited in scope to provide the functions necessary to deliver a package of bits (an internet datagram) from a source to a destination over an interconnected system of networks. There are no mechanisms to augment end-to-end data reliability, flow control, sequencing, or other services commonly found in host-to-host protocols. The internet protocol can capitalize on the services of its supporting networks to provide various types and qualities of service.
    – adam
    Jan 20, 2014 at 3:38
  • Supernetting and subnetting is a superficial categorization. Many RFCs (1518, 1519, 1918, 6598, and others) were simply trying to break the internet up in this way because of the rapid growth of the internet and the subsequent value an individual IPv4 has when they have been depleted. It was the parallel to Domain Name squatting; IP allocation squatting. IPv6 restores the spirit of the Internet Protocol that all devices become publicly addressable. The Brave New World will see see RFCs addressing this new social problem of handling privacy and security when NAT is redundant.
    – adam
    Jan 20, 2014 at 4:01

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