IPv6 was developed in the late 1990s as a successor to IPv4 to address the internet’s rapid growth and prevent IPv4 address exhaustion. The original vision was that, after a period of dual-stack operation, IPv4 would be phased out. Over 25 years later, full-scale depletion of IPv4 addresses is imminent, yet IPv6 adoption remains slow — currently only about 30% worldwide, with the same proportion of Alexa Top 1,000 websites reachable via IPv6. The timeline for a full transition remains uncertain.
Understanding IP Addresses: The Internet’s Postal System
Before diving into the complexities of IPv6 adoption, it’s essential to understand what these protocols actually do. Think of IP addresses as the internet’s equivalent of postal addresses — they tell data packets where to go across the vast network of interconnected computers that make up the internet.
IPv4 vs. IPv6 address space: A scale comparison
The scale difference is staggering.
The traceroute tool is one of the most valuable yet straightforward diagnostic utilities available for network troubleshooting. Built into virtually every operating system, traceroute runs a connection test from one computer to another device, showing each “hop” the data takes between network devices.
This comprehensive guide will help you understand how traceroute works, interpret its results and recognize common network problems it can reveal.
Traceroute: Understanding What It Does
To see traceroute in action, we can begin with a simple example of running a traceroute from your computer to Catchpoint’s servers. The specific results will be different for each person. However, in most cases, the results will show you around four to 20 “hops” that packets take to get from your computer to Catchpoint’s servers and back. The first one would likely be your local router, and from there, the data will take multiple “hops” through your internal network and out through your internet service provider (ISP) and over the internet, before finally reaching Catchpoint’s servers.
Figure 1 shows an example of what you might see on the command prompt of a Windows computer.
Figure 1: Image of a traceroute command and the results generated.
Understanding how to run this Continue reading
Alessandro Improta