The Internet Protocol Version 6 (IPv6), formerly also called Internet Protocol next Generation (IPng), is a procedure standardized by the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) since 1998 for the transmission of data in packet-switched computer networks, especially the Internet. In these networks, data is sent in packets in which control information from various network protocols is interleaved around the actual user data according to a layer model. As a protocol of the network layer (layer 3 of the OSI model), IPv6 establishes 128-bit addressing of the network elements involved (computers or routers) within the Internet protocol family that is valid across subnets. It also regulates the process of packet forwarding between subnetworks (routing) using these addresses. The subnetworks can thus be operated with different lower-layer protocols that take account of their different physical and administrative conditions.
In the Internet, IPv6 is expected to replace version 4 of the Internet Protocol, which is still predominantly used at present, in the next few years, since it offers a significantly larger number of possible addresses that IPv4 threatens to exhaust. Critics fear that anonymity on the Internet will be pushed back by the more stable and far-reaching public addressing that is now possible. Supporters criticize the hesitant introduction of IPv6 in view of the expired IPv4 address allocation in all continents except Africa. Around 30% of Google accesses by users from Germany use IPv6 (as of April 2017).