May 25, 2012 CU Insight

Why Credit Unions Need to Understand IPv6

The standardization group IANA (or the Internet Assigned Numbers Authority), which collaborates with IETF (also known as the Internet Engineering Task Force), had long ago already prepared the new standard, IPv6 which goes from the 32 bits of IPv4 to 128 bits.  If you want to know how many addresses that is, don’t try using your calculator; it may go up in smoke!  Why, you ask?  Well, that number is 2 to the power of 128 OR 3.4 x 10 to the power of 38 OR, get this, 340 undecillions (or sextillions).  To understand its magnitude, let’s just say there aren’t enough stars in the universe to total that number!  (Read more)