Psychz - Anup
Votes: 0Posted On: May 19, 2017 08:11:49
Let us first give us a brief introduction about IP address. It is the global addressing scheme used under Internet Protocol. Internet Protocol functions mainly at the network layer of OSI model. Any network device in the world can be recognized with its IP address. The IP addresses are allocated to each device and are unique. IP addresses are 32-bit numbers with every 8 bits separated by a decimal. There are two types of IP addresses- Public and Private. Public IP addresses are unique and assigned to a network(Group of computers) collectively like in an office. However, the multiple systems in the office are assigned private IPs that are common and can be assigned to the systems of other organization.
This article focuses mainly on distinguishing between two versions of IP addresses- IPv4 and IPv6.
Length
The IPv4 address is a 32-bit address that uniquely defines the address over multiple networks. The IPv6 address, on the other hand, was designed as an improved version of IPv4 and is 128 bits long.
Address Space
The address space is defined as the total number of addresses that an address format can produce. It is obtained by raising 2 to the power of the length of the address. Since IPv4 is 32 bits long, the total addresses it can produce is 2 to the power 32 or 4294967296 addresses. It is quite unimaginable that even these many IP addresses became insufficient due to a rapid growth of the internet. Due to depletion of IPv4 addresses, IPv6 addresses were introduced. IPv6 addresses were 128 bits long which means that its address space is 2 to the power of 128.
Address Format
IPv4
Dotted Decimal Notation - IPv4 address is denoted by every 8 bits separated by a decimal. For instance, "10.1.1.1" is an IPv4 address. Every number before the address denotes 8 bits.
Binary Notation - It can also be denoted with binary notation as 00001010 00000001 00000001 00000001. But the more convenient and human-readable format is the dotted notation.
IPv6
Hexadecimal Notation - IPv6 address is 128 bits long. 128 bits is divided into 8 sections, each 2 bytes or 16 bits long. Hence, these 2 bytes are denoted in hexadecimal notation and separated by a colon. For instance, FACD : 0074 : 0000 : 0000 : 0000 : FFFF : 0000 : FACA
This address can be quite tiresome to read. Hence, it is abbreviated by omitting the zeroes and substituting it by a colon. The above address can be abbreviated as
FACD : 74 :: FFFF : 0 : FACA
These were some of the basic differences between IPv4 and IPv6 IP addresses.
