How To Properly Disable IPv6

what of xp users, how do we do ours...because after navigating,couldnt see TCPIP6, JUST SAW Tcpip

In Windows XP IPv6 is not installed by default so if you manually enabled it you can uninstall it by opening up a command prompt, type in and run:

netsh interface ipv6 uninstall

This hint doesn´t work proper, after regedit ipv6 was enabled yet

Andy, open up a command prompt and run IPCONFIG and look to see if your card is still assigned a IPv6 address. If it is still getting a IPv6 address then check to make sure you did not make any mistakes entering the registry key.

My question is, What is IPv6 for... I am sorry for the question, but I dont know anything about computers.

Sekko, every computer is assigned an address so data can be sent between computers just like sending a letter from your home to a friends house. That way the computer network/post office knows where to deliver the data/letter.

TCP/IP has to do with how data is transmitted between computers. TCP/IPv4 (version 4) is what is most common today. The problem with IPv4 is that it only can support so many computers on a network at once. This is because it has to give an address to each computer and only has so many addresses that it can give out. IPv6 fixes this by expanding the number of address that can be assigned.

In most parts of the world there are plenty of addresses that can be assigned with IPv4 so we are not yet at a point where IPv6 is absolutely necessary. Asia is one part of the world where they are starting to run out of IPv4 addresses so they are the largest group of IPv6 users right now. (The reason Asia is running out of IPv4 addresses is because in the early days of the internet each country/geographic area was given a range of addresses they could use. Some areas grew more than expected causing the localized shortage.)

If you want to learn more check out the Wikipedia IPv6 page: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IPv6

-Steve

Cool beans. Anything I can disable that isn't needed is good. When do you think IPv6 will be used in NA?

Matt, that is a good question. I would guess when is primarily based on the need. For the US that will be a long time from now as they were allocated more public IP addresses than any other country (Over 1.3 billion). Canada and Mexico were not so lucky but also have enough for a long time IMO. Check out http://manyeyes.alphaworks.ibm.com/manyeyes/visualizations/ip-address-allocation-by-country-3 for a map showing the allocation of each country in the world.

The allocation of pulic IP addresses is also not the only factor because most private networks use private IP addresses that are not internet routable but perfect for local area networks. For example a large company with 50,000 desktop computers does not use public IP addresses for each computer. Instead they use private addresses such as the 192 prefix or 10 prefix that you may be familiar with combined with a network router to connect their private network to the Internet. The problems start when they run out of private network addresses or certain services typically need a public address such as a web server.

Additionally, when countries change over to IPv6 the majority of consumer hardware will be rendered useless and will have to be replaced. The linksys router I have at home only supports IPv4 and will likely need to be replaced to support IPv6. At the end of the day I would guess that we are several years from mass IPv6 deployments in NA.

However, Microsoft do not recommend you turn IPv6 off. This will break Meeting Spaces, Remote Assistance, Homegroups, and DirectAccess. It may end up breaking other things as the Product Group does not rigorously test Win7 with IPv6 turned off, so most of our caught bugs with it come from dogfood and private beta customer testing.
IPv6 is the future folks. Rather than hiding from the inevitable, start using it and get a leg up on the folks you are competing with in the workforce. A few years from now it will be everywhere and most folks that stuck with IPv4 knowledge will be seeing their jobs go to those who paid attention. If you don't believe me, go chat with all the IPX, SPX, NetBEUI, Token Ring, and ArcNet experts.

According to KB929852 the value should be 0xFFFFFFFF.

@PJB, Thanks I updated the article to match the MS KB. Although I think 0xFF also works fine.

I'am working with the Windows.7 64BIT version.
I tried this Reg.Tweak on it,... and it works!
Thnx!

The real question that must is why would you want to disable this? Is there some security issue here that I don't know about? Please elaborate on what benefit disabling this feature will do. Thanks.