Internet Protocol version 6 (IPv6) is a set of specifications from the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) that is responsible for identifying network devices and routing traffic across the internet. IPv6 is an upgrade of IP version 4 (IPv4).
The basics of IPv6 are similar to those of IPv4. Devices can use IPv6 as source and destination IP addresses to pass packets over a network. Tools such as ping and traceroute work for network testing as they do in IPv4, with some slight variations.
The IETF published the specification (RFC 8200) for IPv6 in 2017 and elevated it to Internet Standard (STD 86).