IPv6 standards and RFCs

Since the early days of the Internet, the Internet Protocol Version 4 (IPv4) has been used to transfer digital data. Today this protocol is widely used in internal networks of agencies and organizations, as well as in provider networks across the globe. The Internet and all the networks using IPv4 today have to face a profound technological change because it is inevitable for all networks to support the successor IPv6 in the foreseeable future. The protocols concerning the global Internet are written as Standards documents (STDs) and Request for Comments documents (RFCs) by the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF). Roughly 200 of those documents are concerned with the definition and operation of IPv6, including adoptions of related protocols (e.g. ICMP -> ICMPv6), so that an interoperation with IPv6 is possible, as it is with IPv4.