Introduction Since its inception, the Internet has continued to evolve and so is the number of users. All over the world, businesses are actively using the Internet to reach a wider market and to remain relevant to the needs of consumers. While this is happening, experts are worried about the effectiveness of Internet Protocol version 4 (IPv4) as the predominant Internet protocol (Mei-Yan 275). Internet Protocol (IP) is a key component of the Transmission Control Protocol / Internet Protocol (TCP/IP) suite and permits data transmission in the form of IP datagram (Mei-Yan 275). Weaknesses of IPv4 According to Durand (79), IPv4 has been used extensively for the last over 30 years. There are, however, several limitations of IPv4. According to Mei-Yan (275), IPv4 is quite difficult to configure and it’s Quality of Service (QoS) is greatly reduced. In addition, this network protocol makes a network vulnerable to security attacks (Mei-Yan 275). Another serious shortcoming of IPv4 is that it cannot meet the ever-increasing demands of Internet addresses (Durand 79). According to Cerf (96), there was approximately 5% of IPv4 address space available by the year 2010. Growth and Deployment IPv6 IPv6 refers to version 6 of Internet Protocol. Durand (79) considers IPv6 to be an advancement of IPv4 which has been used for years. Cleary, its growth was prompted by the deficiencies of IPv4 and with time, it is expected to completely take over as the leading Internet protocol (Mei-Yan 275). However, considering that IPv4 is widely used by many the change to IPv6 can only happen gradually and a radical change may not be possible (Durand 79). This change process is also complicated by the fact that the popularity of IPv4 among users far outweighs that of IPv6 (Durand 79). There is also a lack of infrastructure needed to support IPv6 and the total cost of all the requisite human and non-human resources is quite high (Durand 79). Although some people regard IPv6 as a failed project its growth and implementation are unavoidable (Caicedo, Joshi & Tuladhar 36). Caicedo et al. (36) further point out that several nations faced with the address limitation of IPv4 have prioritized the transition to IPv6. The problem of changing to IPv6 is further complicated by the presence of many networks using differing standards. The Internet Engineering Task Force Next Generation Transition (IETF NGtrans) group developed tools to enable a smooth transition from IPv4 to IPv6. Among these tools are the hybrid stack and tunneling mechanisms (Durand 80). The hybrid stack implementation places the two protocols on the same stack and each communicates with peers. Where both protocols are present, IPv6 is chosen for better performance. The same code is accessed and used by applications to access either protocol (Durand 80). Figure 1 shows the implementation of a hybrid stack. Figure 1: Hybrid Stack Where tunneling is used, it facilitates the connection of isolated IPv6 networks through an area covered by IPv4 networks (Durand 80). Figure 2 shows how IPv6 is carried within an IPv4 packet. Figure 2: Implementation of IPv6 within an IPv4 packet Benefits of IPv6 As explained elsewhere in this paper, the challenges of using IPv4 pushed experts to start thinking of a soluti