IP Address (IPV4 and IPV6)

IP Address stands for Internet Protocol Address. This is a logical address assigned to a system so that it can be identified in different networks. It is said logical as the IP address is not permanent, we can change it. Every IP address is combined with two parts Network Part and Host Part.

Network Part– It is a number to identify a particular network on the internet. It is always Unique.

Host Part– It is a number or identity of the system connected within the particular network.

It is classified on the basis of bit size, usage, subnet mask, and addressing.

According to bit size, it is of two types- IPV4(32bit) and IPv6(128 bit)

According to usage, it is also of two kinds- Private, Public where private is used on LAN, and the public on the Internet.

According to the subnet mask, it is of two types- Classfull (IPV4 only), and Classless (IPV4 and IPV6). where classful uses the default subnet mask and classless does not use the default subnet mask.

According to addressing, it is of four types- Unicast, Multicast, Broadcast, Anycast. where unicast is used to address a particular device (IPV4 and IPV6), multicast is used to address a group of devices (IPV4 and IPV6), the broadcast is used to address an entire community (IPV4 only), anycast is used to address only the nearest device (IPV6 only).

There is one more classification on the basis of octet which is only for IPV4. It is of 5 types.

Class A- 1st Octet (1-126)

Class B- 1st Octet (128-191)

Class C- 1st Octet (192-223)

Class D- 1st Octet (224-239)

Class E- 1st Octet (240-255)

This is a 32-bit addressing scheme. It has 4 octets and each octet contains 8 bits and each is separated by a dot (.). Each octet ranges between 0 to 255 and the IP ranges between 0.0.0.0 to 255.255.255.255.

This is a 128-bit addressing scheme. It has 8 groups of 16 bits containing 4 hexadecimal digits each separated by a colon (:). Each group ranges from 0 to F.

After all, this is also not the final representation of IPV6 its still to be simplified as

1. Leading Zeros in a group can be removed.
2. If there are one or more groups of zeros consequently then they can be replaced with a double colon (::).

So after the simplification, the above IP will be:

Public IP Address: It is the IP address that is assigned to a router by its ISP (Internet Service Provider). It is unique and registered IP over the internet and the sole identity of a device on the internet. It is allocated dynamically.

Private IP Address: It is the IP address that is assigned to any device connected to a router and these are not registered over the internet. This IP is the sole identity of a device to the router with this IP one cannot surf the internet to access into the internet your Private IP must be converted into Public IP this is done by NAT(Network addresss Transalation). This IP address can be allocated to a device in two types- Static and Dynamic

Static- Admin can assign an IP to its network in which he have to define every IP manually to the devices. Here if the network part mismatches with the router then it will not build connection with that here the admin needs to be careful.

Dynamic- Here the router itself assign the IP addresses to the devices which are connected to it randomly. Here there will not be any problem regarding mismatch of the IP and it make admin free from doing it manually. It is also known as DHCP (Dynamic Host Configuration Protocol)

If you want to know what is your device’s IP address then follow the steps below.

Step-1: Open your Command Prompt

Step-2: Type the command

ipconfig

It will display your both IP address i.e IPV4 as well as IPV6

For Linux users-

Step-1: Open your terminal

Step-2: Type the command

ifconfig

It will display your both IP address i.e IPV4 as well as IPV6. To know more operations of this command visit https://kalitut.com/ifconfig-command/

It was discovered to overcome the problem of exhausting IPV4 addresses. As the technology developed it also increased the usage of internet and devices which exhausted the IPV4 addresses.IPV6 helped to produce large amount of addresses and also made large number of user to access the internet.

If you want to learn more about IP addresses then you can follow our articles

1. How can I discover if a link sent to me has an IP address tracker?
2. How does INTERNET PROTOCOL works?