Internet Protocol (IP) for IPv6

4/8/2010

IP is the mailroom of the TCP/IP stack, where packet sorting and delivery take place. At this layer, each incoming or outgoing packet is referred to as a datagram. Each IP datagram bears the source IP address of the sender and the destination IP address of the intended recipient. Unlike the MAC addresses, the IP addresses in a datagram remain the same throughout a packet's journey across an inter-network. IP layer functions are described below.

IP is central to the TCP/IP stack — all other TCP/IP protocols use IP — and all data passes through it. IP is a connectionless protocol and has some limitations. If IP attempts packet delivery and in the process a packet is lost, delivered out of sequence, duplicated, or delayed, neither sender nor receiver is informed. Packet acknowledgement is handled by a higher-layer transport protocol, such as TCP.

IP is responsible for addressing and routing packets between hosts, and for fragmentation. Fragmentation is the process of breaking a datagram into smaller pieces for inter-network routing. IP fragments packets prior to sending them and reassembles them upon receipt.

Windows CE .NET 4.1 and later provides a dual protocol stack to support 32-bit IPv4 addresses and 128-bit IPv6 addresses. For information about the stack architecture, see Dual Stack Architecture.

The following table shows links to information about IPv6.

Area	IPv6 topics
Addressing, name registration and name resolution	IPv6 Addressing Host Name Resolution for IPv6 Assigning an IPv6 Address to a Device
Configuring addresses	Methods for Configuring IPv6 Addresses IPv6 Implementations
Routing	Routing for IPv6 Neighbor Discovery (ND)) Internet Control Message Protocol for IPv6 (ICMPv6) Managing IPv6 Routes
Subnet multicasting	Multicast Listener Discovery (MLD) IP Multicasting for IPv6