As the web progresses (very slowly) towards the next generation of internet addressing, it will become a thing for people, businesses, tech admins and server management teams to have an easy and convenient way to check if their internet-connected devices are up and running more and more important. Use IPv4 or IPv6.
This may actually vary from device to device, you may have IPv6 enabled on your internet connection, however, if your local area network (LAN) is not configured to assign IPv6 to some devices, they may still fall back to the older , the decreasing IPv4 protocol.
First of all, you need to collect test tools for testing pure IPv6 website content in a pure IPv4 environment: https://ipv6proxy.cn
An IP address is a unique numerical identifier assigned to every computer connected to the Internet. It is also called an IP number or Internet address. An IP address specifies the technical format of the addressing and packet scheme. Most networks use Transmission Control Protocol (TCP) in conjunction with IP. TCP allows a virtual connection to be established between a destination and a source. It sounds complicated, but all in all, every computer on the internet has its own identification number. Each number has to be unique (unless we get more technical and dig into NAT - we won't have to worry about that once IPv4 stops completely) and looks like this:
1.2.3.4
123.214.212.144
64.82.220.151Normal day-to-day use of the internet means you won't see these. They are often masked by domain names - such as www.google.com or www.twitter.com, and while those domains themselves translate to IP addresses, remembering domain names is a much easier task for us humans.
At the time of writing:
Google Website: 172.217.16.238
Twitter: 104.244.42.1
What is IPv4?
IPv4 is the fourth version of the Internet Protocol (IP) and is the primary communication protocol used on the Internet. IPv4 was developed in the early 1980s and is the most widely used version of IP today. All IP addresses you can see above are IPv4 - 1-3 numbers that can identify them, divided into 4 parts, divided by decimal places. These are called 32-bit addresses.
What is IPv6?
IPv6 is the next-generation Internet protocol designed to eventually replace IPv4. IPv6 has a much larger address space than IPv4, among other improvements.
IPv6 is the latest version of the Internet Protocol (IP), which provides a system for identifying and locating computers on a network and routing traffic through the Internet. IPv6 was developed in the late 1990s and early 2000s because it required more IP addresses than IPv4 provided.
IPv6 is not backward compatible with IPv4, which means that devices and infrastructure using IPv6 cannot communicate with devices and infrastructure using IPv4.
IPv6 looks like this:
2606:4700:10::6816:2968
2a00:1450:4009:817::200e
2606:4700:10::ac43:c22
As you can see, IPv6 is more difficult to deal with than IPv4 -- but since they use 128-bit addresses instead of IPv4's 32-bit addresses, more unique addresses may appear.
At the time of writing:
Google.com's IPv6 address is: 2a00:1450:4009:822::200e
What is the difference between IPv4 and IPv6?
Since the two protocols are not compatible, you must connect to one or the other. Some of the main differences between them are:
IPv4 addresses are 32 bits long, while IPv6 addresses are 128 bits long.
IPv4 uses dotted decimal notation for addresses, while IPv6 uses colon-separated hexadecimal notation.
IPv4 addresses are divided into four octets, while IPv6 addresses are divided into eight hexadecimals.
IPv4 addresses are represented in decimal, while IPv6 addresses may be represented in decimal, or in a more compressed form using hexadecimal notation.
IPv4 addresses are typically assigned to devices using DHCP, while IPv6 addresses can be assigned statically or using DHCPv6 or SLAAC, the IPv6 equivalent of DHCP, where devices can automatically configure their IPv6 address, default gateway, and DNS server.
IPv4 addresses can be broadcast, while IPv6 addresses cannot.
IPv4 addresses have the concept of a subnet mask, while IPv6 addresses use a concept called a prefix.
IPv4 addresses can be used for unicast and broadcast communication, while IPv6 addresses can only be used for unicast communication.
IPv4 addresses can be used for point-to-point communication, while IPv6 addresses cannot.
IPv4 addresses are typically assigned to devices using NAT, while IPv6 addresses are not.
Check IPv6 Growth
You can see year-over-year IPv6 growth here: https://www.google.com/intl/en/ipv6/statistics.html
How can I tell if I'm using IPv4 or IPv6?
Both IPv4 and IPv6 can be accessed from the same computer or device, but never through the same request. You will communicate using either IPv4 or IPv6. Since it's impossible to have the entire Internet switch at the same time, Internet Service Providers (ISPs) have implemented hybrid solutions that allow them to proxy one protocol through their servers to allow hybrid access to both.
You can check whether you are using IPv4 or IPv6 in a web browser, command prompt, terminal, or application:
https://ip.show/IP.show
By using IP.show you can check if you are:
On a device that supports IPv4 here: https://v4.ip.show
On a device that supports IPv6 here: https://v6.ip.show
If your connection supports both, you will be able to connect to both webpages and see your associated unique external IP address. If either doesn't work, it's probably because you're using a device that doesn't support v4 or v6.
Advanced usage:
curl ip.show
wget -qO - ip.show
text mode:
https://ip.show/?plain=true