Computers were once the exclusive domain of government agencies and academic organisations. Over the years, they have become more and more cumbersome and expensive. Thanks to technological improvement, they are now compact, inexpensive, and widely used. Their numbers are swelling as we talk about internet protocol, or IP, in short, which manages the massive traffic of information between these billions of devices it attaches an electronic return address to all online requests and activities. An IP address is concealed behind a domain name service (DNS), which changes numbers into names so that internet users can easily navigate the web and create a website like www business hyphen standard dot com.
The network layer communications protocol for transporting datagrams across network borders is known technically as the internet protocol. We currently use internet protocol version 4, or ipv4. It was introduced more than three decades ago and has a number of restrictions, including its ability to support billions of addresses.
Each IPv4 address is a 32-bit numeric address written as four numbers separated by periods. There is a cap of 4.3 billion addresses on each octet, which is a set of numbers. Although this figure might seem enormous, it is not. We are rapidly running out of addresses for the internet.
As a result, the world is now using the sixth version of the internet protocol. The principal difference between IPv4 and IPv6 is the length of the address; an IPv4 address is a 32-bit numeric address, whereas an IPv6 address is a 128-bit hexadecimal address.
Hexadecimal addresses contain both numbers and letters, and the alphabet can produce 340 undecillion, or 340 trillion, addresses. As you might expect, it is sufficient for the foreseeable future.
IPV6 also addresses IPV4’s security shortcomings by enabling end-to-end encryption. Other advantages of the new internet protocol include the ability to connect to multiple networks at the same time, each with its own distinct address, and the ability to combine multiple enterprise networks without readdressing.
