Microsoft urges support for new IP
C|Net | at | by Mike
Microsoft is lobbying the computing industry to start moving the Internet to the next-generation underpinnings that will lay the groundwork for much richer networking. At its WinHEC conference here, Microsoft executives urged hardware and software engineers to support IPv6, a replacement of the IPv4 version of Internet Protocol that underlies all communications across the Internet. IPv6's chief benefit is enabling a vastly larger number of computing devices to connect to the network by essentially boosting IPv4's limited number of addresses.
Among the reasons Microsoft would prefer to see IPv6 become widely used is that it enables the company's vision for peer-to-peer networking, the connection of computing devices without need for centralized servers. Shappell also unveiled Microsoft peer-to-peer plumbing called Peer Name Resolution Protocol (PNR) that lets devices find each other on the network.