As of August 1st 2009 the Hosting Services provided by SharedLayer are supporting the IPv6 protocol fully native. Along with the standard assignment of IPv4 addresses clients can now request their IPv6 range of addresses for their services.

Those who are unsure on what IPv6 offers will find some information in the introduction below.

IPv6 Protocol
The IPv6 Protocol, earlier designated IPng (next generation) is a more permanent solution of the shortage problems with the IPv4 addresses.
The introduction of IPv6 into the Hosting Networks is a lengthy process, SharedLayer is one of the first companies that made a step in this direction.

The IPv6 address is 128 bit long where the IPv4 address = 32 bits, the IPv4 provides an addressing capability of approximately 4 billion addresses.
In the early stages of the internet this seemed sufficient, not anticipating that the internet would grow explosively and worldwide.

IPv6 is provides an addressing capability of 2128 ≈ 3×1038 addresses, in a more understandable perspective this would mean that there is an addressing capability to assign an unique address to each device connected to the internet.
Another way of putting things into perspective is assuming that with IPv6 each person on the earth could own a IP range of the size of the current internet.

While these numbers are impressive it is not the intent of the IPv6 address space to assure geographical saturation with usable addresses, the packet format of IPv6 allows a better and systematic (hierarchical) allocation of addresses and efficient aggregration of routes.

Addressing Length

The length of the IPv6 address is the most impressive and also the most important change when changing from IPv4 to IPv6.
An IPv6 Address is usually written as eight groups of 4 hexadecimal digits, seperated by a colon.

Example:
2001:0db8:85a3:0000:0000:8a2e:0370:7334 

To shorten the writing of the address several simplifications to the address notation are allowed within the IPv6 address.
Any leading zero’s in a group may be ommited.

Example:
2001:db8:85a3:0:0:8a2e:370:7334

Besides ommiting leading zero’s in a group there’s another efficient method where one or any number of consecutive zero’s may be replaced by two colons (::)

Example:
2001:db8:85a3::8a2e:370:7334 >

This method may only be used once in an address, because multiple occurences would lead to address ambiguity.

Accordingly, the localhost (loopback) address, fully written as 0000:0000:0000:0000:0000:0000:0000:0001, may be reduced to ::1 and the undetermined IPv6 address (zero value), i.e., all bits are zero, is simply ::

IPv6 Address Types
IPv6 addresses are classified into three types (RFC 4291)

Individual (unicast)
identifying single network interface. Assigned by a method resembling rather the CIDR than A, B and C Classes

Group (multicast)
identify a group of network interfaces, to whose members the data should be delivered to. Group addressed datagram is recommended for all group members, therefore it replaces the broadcast from IPv4. It’s support in IPv6 is mandatory!

Selective (anycast)
identifies a group of network interfaces, where one IP address can be assigned to several nodes simultaneously, but only the “closest” one should react (respond). 

Address Space Distribution