Computer Science – Network hardware | e-Consult

An IP address (Internet Protocol address) is a numerical label assigned to each device connected to a computer network that uses the Internet Protocol for communication. Its primary purpose is to uniquely identify a device, allowing data to be routed correctly across the network. Think of it like a postal address for a computer.

IPv4 is the older version, using a 32-bit address space. This results in approximately 4.3 billion unique addresses. IPv4 addresses are typically written in dotted decimal notation (e.g., 192.168.1.1). However, the IPv4 address space is now largely exhausted.

IPv6 is the newer version, using a 128-bit address space. This provides a vastly larger number of possible addresses (approximately 3.4 x 10³⁸). IPv6 addresses are written in hexadecimal notation, separated by colons (e.g., 2001:0db8:85a3:0000:0000:8a2e:0370:7334). IPv6 was developed to address the limitations of IPv4 and to support the growing number of internet-connected devices. Key advantages of IPv6 include simplified header structure, improved security features, and stateless address autoconfiguration.