IP Address - IPv4 vs IPv6 Tutorial

an IP address is a numeric address it's an identifier for a computer or device on a network every device has to have an IP address for communication purposes the IP address consists of two parts the first part is the network address and the second part is the host address there are also two types of IP addresses the first one is the most common one it's called IP version 4 and a second type is IP version 6 IP version 4 is the current version of IP addresses it's a 32-bit numeric address written as four numbers separated by periods each group of numbers that are separated by periods is called an octet the number range in each octet is 0 to 255 this address version can produce over 4 billion unique addresses in the world of computers and networks this IP address and this format here is meaningless computers and networks don't read IP addresses in this standard numeric format and that's because they only understand numbers in a binary format a binary format is a number that only uses ones and zeros the binary number for this IP address is this number shown here this binary number is what computers and networking devices actually read so the question is how do we get this binary number from this IP address i pi/2 s4 is made up of four sets of eight binary bits and these sets are called octets the bits in each octet are represented by a number so starting from the left the first bit has a value of 128 then 64 then 32 and so on all the way down to one each bit on the octet can be either a 1 or a 0 if the number is a 1 then the number that it represents counts if the number is a zero then the number that it represents does not count so by banding the ones and the zeros in the octet you can come up with a range from 0 to 255 so for example the first octet and this IP address is 66 so how do we get a binary number out of 66 first you look at the octet chart and you would put ones under the numbers that would add up to the total of 66 so you would put a 1 in the 64 slot so now you already have 64 so we need 2 more so let's put in number 1 in the two slot so now if we count all the numbers that we have ones underneath them you will get a total of 66 all of the other bits would be zeros because we don't need to count them since we already have our number so this number here is the binary bit version of 66 so we'll put that number down here so let's do the next number which is 94 so let's put a 1 under 64 16 8 4 & 2 so if we were to add all the numbers that we have ones underneath them we would get a total of 94 and since we don't want to count any of the other numbers we just put zeros under the rest so the next number is 29 so let's put a 1 under 16 8 4 & 1 and when you add all the numbers up you get 29 and our last number is 13 so let's select 8 for 1 and when you add those up you get 13 when the internet was first developed programmers didn't realize how big it would become they thought at IP version 4 which produced over 4 billion addresses would be enough but they were wrong IP version 6 is the next generation of IP addresses the main difference between IP version 4 and IP version 6 is the length of the address the IP version 4 address is a 32-bit numeric address whereas IP version 6 is a hundred and twenty 8-bit hexadecimal address hexadecimal uses both numbers and alphabets in the address so with this type of address IP version 6 can produce an unbelievable 340 undecillion IP addresses that's the number 340 with 36 digits after it so as you might have guessed IP version 6 is more than enough for the foreseeable future so as stated before IP version 6 is a 128 bit hexadecimal address it's made up of 8 sets of 16 bits with the eight sets separated by colons as you can see here so in a similar way that we converted an IP version 4 address to a binary number this is how we convert a binary number to a hexadecimal address in an IP version 6 IP address each hexadecimal character represents 4 bits so we have to convert 4 bits at a time to get one hexadecimal character so starting from the beginning we convert the first four bits and put those bits up there against our 4-bit chart which includes an 8 4 2 and a 1 so if we count the numbers that we have ones underneath them you wind up with a 2 so a2 is the first hexadecimal character in this IP version 6 address so let's do the next four bits and put those under our four bit chart if we count all the numbers that we have ones underneath them we have a 4 and a 2 and if we add those up we get 6 so a 6 is the second hexadecimal character in this IP address so let's do our next set of four bits and if we add all the numbers that we have ones underneath them we get a total of thirteen but the problem is since thirteen is a double-digit number we cannot use a double-digit number to represent four bits and that's because in a hexadecimal format double-digit numbers have to be represented with a single alphabet which is a through F so in this case we have to use another chart for any four bits that the sum is 10 or higher so in this chart up here if the sum was 10 then we would use the letter A or if the sum was 11 then we would use a B but in this case our sum is 13 so now for the third character in our binary number we would put ad so in our last example let's do the fourth set of bits and if we add those up we get 11 so we have a double-digit character again which means that we have to convert it to a single character alphabet so if we look at our chart up here 11 converts to a B so the first 16 bits of this binary IP version 6 address converts to the hexadecimal address as 2 6 dB