IPv4 DNS Vs. IPv6 DNS- The invention of IPv4 got here within the Seventies. The event of IPv6 got here within the Nineties.
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The Fundamentals of DNS
Area Title System is abbreviated as DNS. DNS’s most important operate is to transform IP addresses into hostnames (alphabetic names) inside an area community and vice versa (Kralicek, 2016). As a result of this IP conversion gives a much more user-friendly expertise, DNS is a crucial element of the Web. With out DNS, customers must utilise numeric (IPv4) or hexadecimal (IPv6) addresses to navigate the Web. Customers are way more prone to bear in mind hostnames which might be made up of simply recalled phrases. Amazon.com is an instance of a hostname. 205.251.242.103 is without doubt one of the IPv4 addresses related to Amazon.com. For people, Amazon.com’s hostname is less complicated to recollect than its IPv4 handle. DNS is important since it’s continuously essential to memorise dozens of net addresses. DNS has grown into a world database community that resolves IP addresses to help web visitors. Each IPv4 and IPv6 are supported by DNS.
IPv4
IPv4 was first launched within the Seventies. IPv4 addresses are made up of 32-bit numeric characters, permitting for about 4.3 billion attainable quantity potentialities. As illustrated within the Amazon.com instance above, 32-bit numbers have 4 digits separated by durations. Every of the 4 numbers could be any worth between 0 and 255. IPv4 is a community structure that’s divided into lessons. Solely three of the 5 lessons are extensively utilised by hosts on networks. Class A community addresses are utilized by large organisations reminiscent of governments, universities, firms, and Web Service Suppliers. Class B community addresses are utilized by mid-sized companies and organisations. Class C community addresses are utilized by small companies, organisations, and residential workplaces (Panek, 2020).
IPv6
IPv6 was first developed within the Nineties. The belief that IPv4’s 4.3 billion handle capability can be reached as a result of ever-increasing variety of gadgets requiring addresses prompted the event of IPv6. IPv6, or Web Protocol Model 6, is a protocol that was developed
IPv4 is changed, and the handle exhaustion drawback is overcome by using a 128-bit handle area as an alternative of the 32-bit handle area utilized by IPv4. IPv4 might present exponentially extra addresses than IPv4 (3.4 undecillion addresses) as a result of its wider handle area (Kralicek, 2016). Every of the eight units of IPv6 addresses incorporates 4 hexadecimal digits. 4 bits could be represented by every hexadecimal digit. x:x:x:x:x:x:x:x:x:x:x:x:x:x:x:x:x:x:x:x:x:x:x:x: Every x represents a 16-bit half that may be represented by as much as 4 hexadecimal digits, with colons between the sections (Cisco Press, 2017).
Some Benefits of IPv6 over IPv4
Other than the elevated handle area, IPv6 has just a few different benefits over IPv4. When IPv4 was designed within the Seventies, there was much less emphasis on safety than there’s in the present day. IPv4 required the addition of safety, whereas IPv6 was created with safety built-in. IPv6 employs IPSec to allow end-to-end packet encryption, guaranteeing that knowledge is safely transported throughout the community.
One other advantage of IPv6 is that it doesn’t require Community Deal with Translation (NAT). NAT for IPv4 is a method for coping with the restricted quantity of IP addresses out there. NAT is utilized in routers that join two networks. It converts native community personal addresses into globally distinctive addresses that may be routed to different networks. The router that connects the community to the surface world advertises just one handle when utilizing NAT. When incoming packets are acquired, NAT interprets them as soon as extra to ensure that they’re delivered to the related community system. IPv6 eliminates the requirement for NAT because it solves the issue of restricted handle area. Eradicating NAT from a community is advantageous because it eliminates a single level of failure. Moreover, with out NAT, much less processing is required, main in elevated effectivity and probably quicker knowledge transmission speeds.
IPv6 gives extra configuration choices than IPv4. In IPv4, community directors can allocate IP addresses manually or by means of the Dynamic Host Configuration Protocol (DHCP) (DHCP). DHCP permits a pool of non permanent IP addresses to be assigned routinely. After the “IP Lease” expires, the IP addresses are returned to the pool for reassignment. Stateless IP Deal with Autoconfiguration (SLAAC) is a characteristic of IPv6 that permits IP addresses to be assigned routinely (Hagen, 2014). When a brand new system is added to a community, SLAAC permits it to obtain its personal IP handle with out requiring DHCP.
Broadcast transmissions are supported by IPv4, whereas multicast transmissions are supported by IPv6. Broadcasting is the transmission of information packets to all customers on a community with out the necessity to handle the packets individually or look forward to a response from the customers. A broadcast handle is utilized in IPv4 to ship a broadcast. IPv6, alternatively, was created with multicast in thoughts. Multicast transmits knowledge to a preset set of hosts by including their addresses to multicast teams (Juniper, 2021). As a result of multicast permits senders to decide on who will get the transmission, it’s extra environment friendly than broadcast. This improves community effectivity by eradicating the requirement for community nodes to repeatedly pay attention for and obtain broadcast visitors which will or will not be required.
One other distinction between IPv4 and IPv6 is the High quality of Service (QoS). QoS is a visitors administration method that ensures a sure stage of efficiency for specified functions. For bandwidth-intensive functions like Voice Over Web Protocol, QoS is used (VOIP). VOIP (Voice over Web System) is a protocol that permits telephones to speak over the web, eliminating the necessity for conventional Plain Previous Phone Service (POTS) telephones. The voice high quality of VOIP could be degraded if knowledge switch efficiency is poor (i.e. delay or jitter). QoS knowledge is included in IPv4 packets, and routers are set as much as prioritise important visitors (like VOIP visitors). QoS is built-in into IPv6.
Diferences between IPv4 DNS and IPv6 DNS
In terms of DNS, the transition from IPv4 to IPv6 has no impact on the person expertise. The person will proceed kind in the identical hostnames as earlier than, and the IP handle will probably be resolved within the background, similar to with IPv4. The process of configuring IPv6 DNS is sort of much like that of configuring IPv4 DNS.
In DNS, there are two kinds of lookup zones: ahead and reverse zones. Ahead lookup zones convert hostnames to IP addresses, whereas reverse lookup zones convert IP addresses to hostnames. ‘A Data’ are used to characterize ahead lookup zones in IPv4. Solely 32-bit IP addresses could be saved in ‘A Data.’ DNS wanted a system that might settle for the bigger IPv6 addresses, that are 128 bits lengthy. The ‘AAAA’ (Quad A) document was launched as the reply (Liu, 2011). BIND (Berkeley Web Title Area) is an open-source DNS server that’s extensively used. IPv6 and ‘AAAA’ Data are presently supported by BIND. Hostnames are translated to IP addresses by way of reverse zone lookups. Reverse zone lookups in IPv6 are achieved by way of the IP6.ARPA area (Pete, 2004). The phrase ARPA stands for Deal with and Routing Parameters Space. In the identical method, IPv4 makes use of the IP4.ARPA area for reverse lookups.
Benefits of IPv6 DNS
The basic advantage of IPv6 DNS is that it permits IPv6’s benefits over IPv4. These embody a big handle area, the elimination of NAT, setup advantages, multicast help, and QoS, amongst others.
One other benefit of IPv6 DNS is that it’s safer than IPv4 DNS.
Disadvantages of IPv6 DNS
The truth that IPv6 DNS isn’t backward suitable with IPv4 is a unfavorable. DNS servers should reply to each IPv6 and IPv4 requests for the reason that IPv6 rollout is an extended course of that may take a number of years. This want leads to much less effectivity till the conclusion of the IPv6 migration.
Subnetting might turn out to be much less frequent because of IPv6. In IPv4, subnetting is continuously used to phase networks with a purpose to maximise the effectivity of the out there IP area. System directors might restrict this behaviour as a result of IPv6 has an exponentially larger variety of out there IP addresses. Subnetting has the unintended consequence of minimising undesirable on-line visitors. Much less subnetting would end in the next visitors burden on DNS servers, which might be a disadvantage.
As a result of IPv6 doesn’t require or allow NAT, a safety characteristic present in NAT isn’t relevant to IPv6. The interior community IP addresses and port numbers are hidden behind NAT in order that they aren’t seen to the surface world. The truth that IPv6 doesn’t help this could possibly be considered as a disadvantage. This drawback is debatable as a result of the concealment of inner community IP addresses isn’t thought-about a dependable safety characteristic.
As beforehand acknowledged, IPv6 assigns IP addresses routinely utilizing SLAAC. The IPv6 finish nodes select their very own IP addresses by way of SLAAC. The DNS servers nonetheless require reverse DNS data for the IP specified utilizing SLAAC, however these data usually are not out there (Web Society, 2014). This drawback is not related as a result of a number of methods for addressing it have been advisable and applied.
How IPv6 Might change the way in which networks use DNS
The advantages of IPv6 reminiscent of much less NAT and extra IP area, mixed with the proliferation of recent related IoT gadgets, will end in dramatically elevated visitors to DNS servers. This rise will virtually actually necessitate scaling up the DNS server infrastructure to match the demand. There will probably be a necessity for extra processing energy and storage. The DNS hierarchy is a tree with managed zones on the prime and root servers on the backside. There are solely 13 root server addresses as a result of IPv4 constraints, nevertheless there are over 600 particular person root servers dispersed over the world. The rise in web visitors and the removing of IPv4’s constraints might have the addition of extra root server addresses.
