Briefly describe three limitations (1 mark per limitation) of IPv4 that justify the development and deployment of IPv6.
Try an answer before revealing the guidance below.
Key Concepts
- 32-bit address exhaustion
- Header processing
- Router fragmentation
- Header checksum
- QoS / flow labelling
Answer Approach
- Start with the address space.
- Consider the per-hop work a router does on an IPv4 header.
- Consider features IPv4 lacks natively.
Full Answer
Answer status: Verified against study notes. Revision notes, not an official marking scheme.
(1) Address space: 32-bit addresses (about 4.3 billion) are exhausted, which forced workarounds such as NAT. (2) Router processing: the variable-length header with options, a header checksum recomputed at every hop, and fragmentation performed by routers slow down forwarding; IPv6 uses a fixed 40-byte header, no checksum, and no router fragmentation. (3) Limited support for quality of service: IPv4 has no flow label for identifying flows needing special handling (IPv6 adds it, along with extension headers).
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