Few improvements were introduced instead of just figuring out a way to increase the address size. One of the most elegant improvement was made to the IPv6 header which is much simpler than the IPv4.
A 4-bit field tat defines what version of IP is in use
An 8-bit field that defines the type of traffic contained within the IP datagram, and allows for different classes of traffic to receive different priorities
A 20-bit field that’s used in conjunction with the traffic class field for routers to make decisions about the quality of service level for a specific datagram.
A 16-bit field that defines how long the data payload section of the datagram is.
IPv6 addresses are four times as long as IPv4 addresses. That means that they have more ones and zeros which means that they take longer to transmit across a link. To help reduce the problems with additional data that IPv6 addresses impose on the network…
One way to do that is getting rid of all the optional field.
defines what kind of header is immediately after this current one. These additional headers are optional and allow for chain of headers to be formed.
An 8-bit field that’s identical in purpose to the TTL field in an IPv4 header.
Each 128bits