An IP address is a unique number to identifying of a computer or another device on the Internet. It is similar to a mailing address, which identifies where postal mail comes from and where it should be delivered. IP addresses uniquely identify the source and destination of data transmitted with the Internet Protocol.
Each IP address is a series of characters, such as '192.168.1.1'. Via DNS resolvers, which translate human-readable domain names into IP addresses, users are able to access websites without memorizing this complex series of characters. Each IP packet will contain both the IP address of the device or domain sending the packet and the IP address of the intended recipient, much like how both the destination address and the return address are included on a piece of mail.
■ IP address generated by four sub numbers that separated with ‘dots’.
■ When a user going to connect to the Internet an IP number will automatically assigned.
■ Within a quad numbers can only take values from 0 to 255.
■ That means lowest value of IP will be 0.0.0.0 & highest one is 255.255.255.255.
The combination of these four parts provides 4.2billion (256*256*256*256) possible addresses for us to use. This IP addressing system we are currently using is called IP version4(IPv4). Due to the growth of the Internet this version will be not sufficient in the near future. The solution would be new IP version6 (IPv6) –hexadecimal based IP address Structure.
IPv4 and IPv6 addresses
IPv4 addresses are 32 bits long (four bytes). An example of an IPv4 address is 216.58.216.164, which is the front page of Google.com.
The maximum value of a 32-bit number is 232, or 4,294,967,296. So the maximum number of IPv4 addresses, which is called its address space, is about 4.3 billion. In the 1980s, this was sufficient to address every networked device, but scientists knew that this space would quickly become exhausted. Technologies such as NAT have delayed the problem by allowing many devices to use a single IP address, but a larger address space is needed to serve the modern Internet.
A major advantage of IPv6 is that it uses 128 bits of data to store an address. The size of IPv6's address space - 340 duodecillion is much, much larger than IPv4.
