This book is a straightforward discussion of the concepts, principles, and processes of Internet Protocol version 6 (IPv6) and how IPv6 is supported by the Microsoft Windows .NET Server 2003 family of operating systems. It is primarily a discussion of protocols and processes rather than a discussion of planning, configuration, deployment, and management. It is also mostly about IPv6 rather than the specifics of the implementation for the Windows .NET Server 2003 family. Therefore, this book does not contain in-depth implementation details of the IPv6 protocol for the Windows .NET Server 2003 family, such as structures, tables, buffers, or coding logic. These details are highly guarded Microsoft intellectual property that is of interest only to a relative handful of software developers.

The purpose of this book is to provide an educational vehicle that will enable one to learn IPv6 to a fair technical depth—the terms, the addresses, the protocols, and the processes. This is not intended to be a breezy marketing overview of IPv6 and how it "provides integrated and interoperable technologies to enable exciting new scenarios for personal and enterprise computing."

I will leave that type of documentation to those who are much better at it than I am. The bottom line is that I am a protocols and processes person. My main concern and interest is how the protocols work and what one sees on the wire (what packets are exchanged), and these topics comprise the bulk of this book.