What is IP Address
Shubham Yadav
CRAW Cyber Security PVT ltd, Lane No. 2, Saiyad ul Ajaib, Sainik Farm, Saket, New Delhi Information Security Consulting
An Internet Protocol address/IP address is a numerical label that is assigned to each device connected to a computer network that uses the IP for communication.
IP address act as an identifier for a specific machine on a particular network. The IP address is also called IP number and internet address. IP address specifies the technical format of the addressing and packets scheme. Most networks combine IP with a TCP (Transmission Control Protocol). It also allows developing a virtual connection between a destination and a source.
What is IPv4?
IPv4 or Internet Protocol version 4 was the first version of the internet protocol. It was deployed for production in the ARPANET in 1983. Today it is the most widely used IP version. It is used to identify devices on a network using an addressing system.
The IPv4 uses a 32-bit address scheme allowing it to store 232 addresses which is more than 4 billion addresses. For example 192.0. 2.1
Features of IPv4
- Connectionless Protocol
- Allow creating a simple virtual communication layer over diversified devices
- It requires less memory, and ease of remembering addresses
- Already supported protocol by millions of devices
- Offers video libraries and conferences
What is IPv6?
IPv6 or Internet Protocol version 6 is the most recent version of Internet Protocol. Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) developed IPv6, starting in the 1990s, to ensure the Internet can continue to grow.
This new IP address version is still being deployed to fulfill the need for more Internet addresses. It was aimed to resolve issues that are associated with IPv4. With 128-bit address space, it allows 340 undecillion (trillion trillion trillion) unique address space. IPv6 also called IPng (Internet Protocol next generation). For example: 2001:0db8:85a3:0000:0000:8a2e:0370:7334 .
Features of IPv6
- Hierarchical addressing and routing infrastructure
- Support for quality of service (QoS)
- An ideal protocol for neighboring node interaction
- Stateful and Stateless configuration
Why IPv5 doesn’t exist?
The reason that IPv5 doesn’t exist is that it was never made to become one of the IP protocols. It was planned as a streaming protocol, and it got to its second version ST2. Its packets had the IP version 5 ID but eventually died as a draft.