Hosting Glossary
What is IPv6?
IPv6 in plain English — the definition, the analogy, and why it matters to anyone who runs a website.
The short answer
IPv6 is the successor addressing system with a practically inexhaustible address space, running alongside the exhausted IPv4 internet.
The sections below unpack it properly — how it works, why a site owner should care, and a concrete example of it in the wild.
Written by the HostingAlly team · Last revised 27 July 2026
100+
Terms in this glossary
2 min
Average read
Plain
English, promised
24/7
Humans if you're stuck
Its longer hexadecimal addresses (2001:db8::1) solve IPv4's scarcity permanently; AAAA records are its DNS mapping, and dual-stack setups answer on both protocols during the long transition.
For site owners it's mostly ambient — enabled dual-stack hosting serves IPv6-capable visitors over it automatically, invisibly.
IPv6, by analogy
Adding infinite new phone numbers by lengthening the format — old numbers keep working, new capacity never runs out, and modern phones speak both formats without their owners noticing.
Hold onto that picture and most of the documentation you'll ever read about it becomes considerably less mysterious.
The practical stakes
It's future-proofing that mostly happens to you rather than by you — worth knowing when reading DNS (AAAA records), configuring servers, or debugging the rare visitor-path oddity that differs by protocol.
You don't need to operate this layer daily — you need to recognise it when it's the explanation for something, which is exactly when this page pays for itself.
A concrete example
A dual-stack site serves a mobile visitor over IPv6 (their carrier's native protocol) and an office visitor over IPv4 — same site, same content, plumbing chosen per connection.
Multiply that example across every site on the internet and you have the concept's entire job description.
Where you'll meet it on our platform
On our hosting this mostly takes care of itself — the platform applies the sensible defaults, and the panel exposes the controls when you want them. The concepts worth knowing next: IP Address, A Record and DNS.
Business email on your own domain is included, not sold back as an add-on.
A glossary from people who answer tickets
Every confusing term in hosting eventually becomes a support ticket — so we defined the hundred most common ones properly, once, in the plain English we'd use on the phone.
Daily automatic backups with one-click restores come with every plan.
- 100+ terms, plain English
- Analogies and real examples
- Cross-linked related concepts
- Written by the support desk
Why HostingAlly
Every plan includes this, whatever you pay
Analogies that stick
Each concept gets a picture you'll remember at the moment you actually need it.
Honest about what you can skip
Most terms are recognise-level, not operate-level — the glossary says which is which.
Plain English first
Every term defined for site owners, not for other sysadmins — jargon translated, not restated.
The next reads, mapped
This entry connects to IP Address and A Record — concepts travel in packs, and the pack is linked.
One term, fully landed
IPv6 defined, pictured by analogy and placed in your own control panel — recognise-level in a single read.
The practical stakes named
Not just what it is — when it's the answer to a problem you're having.
Getting Started
How to get going
- 1
Spot it in your own setup
Open your control panel and find where this concept lives — seeing it attached to your own site is what converts definition into understanding.
- 2
Check the defaults
Confirm how your account has this configured — usually correctly by default here, and now you'll know rather than guess.
- 3
Follow the related terms
Concepts travel in packs — IP Address, A Record and DNS complete this one's picture, and each is a two-minute read away.
Included
What's covered on our plans
- 30-day money-back guarantee on hosting plans
- SSH, Git and Composer access on developer-friendly plans
- No setup fees, ever
- Softaculous one-click app installer
- Email accounts on your own domain
- 24/7 support from real people
- Free WebP image optimisation built in
- Free SSL certificate on every plan, renewed automatically
- cPanel — the industry-standard control panel
- NVMe SSD storage as standard
FAQ
Your questions, answered
Do I need to do anything about IPv6?
Usually nothing — hosting platforms handle dual-stack where enabled. The occasional to-do: adding AAAA records when managing DNS manually, or enabling IPv6 on a VPS you administer yourself.
Why hasn't IPv4 just been switched off?
Decades of infrastructure assume it — the transition runs by coexistence, not cutover. Scarcity economics (IPv4 addresses now cost real money) is the pressure slowly finishing the job.
What happens if I outgrow my plan?
You upgrade in place — plan changes apply from your client area without migrations or downtime, and our range runs from small shared plans through VPS to dedicated servers, so growth is an account change rather than a new-host project.
How do I pay, and is billing recurring?
Plans are billed by credit or debit card through our secure checkout, with the renewal price matching the signup price. You can see every invoice in the client area, and cancelling auto-renewal is a setting, not a phone call.
Which control panel do you provide?
cPanel — the industry standard, which means every tutorial on the internet matches your screen, your backups restore anywhere cPanel runs, and skills learned here transfer for life. Plesk and DirectAdmin options exist on specific plans for those who prefer them.
Do you support staging sites?
Yes — plans with staging let you clone the live site, test changes safely, and push to production when ready. It's the difference between 'I hope this update works' and knowing it does.
Are backups included, and can I restore them myself?
Daily automatic backups are standard, restorable from the panel in minutes — files, databases or both, at 3am without a ticket if that's when you need it. For extra cover, you're welcome to run your own offsite copies alongside.
Keep exploring
A Record
An A record maps a hostname directly to an IPv4 address — the DNS entry that tells browsers which server actually holds your website.
IP Address
An IP address is the numeric identifier that locates a machine on a network — the actual destination behind every domain name.
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