Cisco Certified Network Associate (CCNA) Practice Exam

In practical IPv6 application, the encapsulation of IPv6 packets inside IPv4 packets is called what?

1. Tunneling

2. Hashing

3. Routing

4. NAT

The correct answer is: Tunneling

The process of encapsulating IPv6 packets inside IPv4 packets is referred to as tunneling. This technique is essential for facilitating the transition from IPv4 to IPv6 by creating a secure pathway for IPv6 traffic to traverse an IPv4 infrastructure. Tunneling allows IPv6 packets to be encapsulated in an IPv4 header, effectively enabling the communication of IPv6-enabled nodes across an IPv4 network. This encapsulation is particularly valuable in scenarios where a direct IPv6 path is unavailable, ensuring that IPv6 traffic can still reach its destination over an existing IPv4 network. Tunneling provides a solution for network interoperability as organizations gradually migrate to IPv6. Other terms like hashing, routing, and NAT serve different purposes in networking. Hashing is primarily used for data integrity and in algorithms, routing pertains to directing packets along the best pathway within a network, and NAT (Network Address Translation) is concerned with translating private local IP addresses into a public IP address for use on the Internet. These functions do not describe the encapsulation of IPv6 within IPv4 as accurately as tunneling does.