IPv4 vs IPv6 Simplified for Cloud and DevOps Engineers

Author

Govardhana M K
April 03, 2025

TechOps Examples

Hey — It's Govardhana MK 👋

Along with a use case deep dive, we identify the remote job opportunities, top news, tools, and articles in the TechOps industry.

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IN TODAY'S EDITION

🧠 Use Case

  • IPv4 vs IPv6 Simplified for Cloud and DevOps Engineers

🚀 Top News
👀 Remote Jobs

📚️ Resources

📢 Reddit Threads

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🧠 USE CASE

IPv4 vs IPv6 Simplified for Cloud and DevOps Engineers

No DevOps or Cloud engineer can avoid dealing with IP addresses. They are part of everything we build and operate. You might have already worked with them in different ways. For example:

  • Assigning CIDR blocks to VPCs or subnets

  • Setting firewall rules using IP whitelisting

  • Debugging connectivity issues across NAT or overlapping IP ranges

In most of these cases, what you are dealing with is IPv4. But more and more platforms and use cases are now starting to adopt IPv6.

  • IPv4 gives us about 4.3 billion addresses.

  • IPv6? A mind boggling 3.4 × 10^29 billion addresses.

IPv6 was made to never run out, especially with billions of devices in IoT, containers, and multi cloud VPCs.

What is IPv4 ?

IPv4 stands for Internet Protocol version 4.

I’ve simplified the IPv4 structure and components breakdown here.

  • Uses 32 bits

  • Provides around 4.3 billion addresses

  • Written as four decimal numbers (e.g., 192.20.2.123)

  • Each number is called an octet, representing 8 bits and ranges from 0 to 255

IPv4 feels simple, but CIDR collisions, NATs, and subnetting can easily make it a bottleneck at scale.

What is IPv6 ?

IPv6 is the next generation IP protocol.

I’ve simplified the IPv6 structure and components breakdown here.

  • Uses 128 bits

  • Provides a massive address pool (~3.4 × 10^38 total addresses)

  • Written in hexadecimal, separated by colons (e.g., 2001:0db8:85a3:...)

  • No NAT required; supports end to end connectivity

In cloud native systems (especially container heavy or multi region), IPv6 removes the need for NAT and offers true end to end addressing.

IPv6 isn't just the future, it’s quietly becoming the present as IPv4 is slowly running out. If you're building infrastructure today that should scale for 5+ years, ignoring IPv6 is like ignoring HTTPS back in 2010.

Your Terraform/VPC plan, load balancer config, DNS setup, and even your firewall rules should start thinking in IPv6.

What to Do as a DevOps or Cloud Engineer ?

  • Learn IPv6 DNS records and how to use them.

  • Design CIDR plans that avoid overlapping and support future IPv6 adoption.

  • Start enabling IPv6 in new VPCs

  • Always consider dual stack provisioning.

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