IPv6 was finalised in 1998 and deployment has been gradual. Major mobile carriers and large content providers (Google, Facebook, Akamai) prefer it; consumer ISPs roll it out at different paces.
IPv6 has no broadcast (replaced by multicast) and no native NAT model — every device on the network can have a globally-routable address. ULAs (fc00::/7) exist for private use but unlike RFC 1918 they're globally unique by design.
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See also
- IPv4The original 32-bit IP addressing scheme — addresses look like 203.0.113.42 and there are ~4.3 billion of them.
- CIDRA notation for IP address ranges using a prefix length, e.g. 192.168.1.0/24 = 256 addresses.
- CGNATA second layer of NAT operated by an ISP, sharing one public IP between many customers because IPv4 ran out.