14 DAY TRIAL // Vista's Internet protocol version 6 (IPv6) will demolish IPv4. Microsoft's CTP (community technology preview) in December already supports the IPv6-enabled file-sharing and remote-access features. The next gerneration of Internet Protocol makes it important for applications with both voice and video traffic to travel directly between two piers because latency is an issue and users will notice any delay.
Microsoft is being driven to include these changes in order to enable "new application experiences." The changes will mean that "richer collaboration," multiplayer gaming, or voice and video into applications will be incorporated. Sinead O'Donovan, product unit manger for networking at Microsoft said, "When we looked at key applications such as MSN Messenger, we learned that developers needed to do too many tricks to get them to work over NAT (Network Address Translation)." This is a commonly used technology that enables several devices to connect to the Internet via one IP address.
According to O'Donovan, IPv6 offers securer data transmissions through longer IP addresses. The header length for IPv6 is 40-bytes and address 128-bits, compared to IPv4's 20-byte to 24-byte header and 32-bit address. Included are other inherent security features: worms and viruses need to scan a larger range of IP addresses to find exposed machines, which requires increased computing power. Alex Lightman, chief executive officer and president of IPv6 Summit Inc., said "IPv6 has 2128 [or 3.4 1038] addresses," a number so large it's incomprehensible, "compared to IPv4, which has 232 addresses, or roughly 4 billion addresses."
Along with the natural increased security, there have been a few additions as well. IPsec encryption and Secure Neighbor Discovery (SEND) protocol will keep Vista safer overall. SEND prevents IP spoofing through cryptographically generating addresses.