IPv6 in VPC

IPv6 is a successor of IPv4 that has a very large space of public IP addresses. We can enable IPv6 for our VPC and subnets initially enabled for IPv4 only. This way, our VPC will operate in dual-stack mode. IPv4 and IPv6 traffic flows without interacting, and the resources can communicate with each by using either IPv4 or IPv6 or both.

Why IPv6?

IPv4 address space is limited by its design and is getting exhausted quickly. With the increase in the usage of internet devices, it is impossible to meet the requirement of assigning IPv4 address to every device. Therefore, we must shift to the IPv6 addressing scheme to avoid running out of IPv4 addresses.

IPv4 vs. IPv6

IPv6 is quite different from IPv4 in design and working aspects. Let’s see some of their main differences in the table below: