All the Internet users have heard about IP addresses. But do you know, what is the IP address? What is the important? What are the different types of IP address exists? In this post, I will discuss these topics. Let's go ahead and start talking about these interesting topics.
Friends do you have idea about what we all do on internet? Actually we all share our information on the internet. You may be reading this blog using your phone or using your laptop or PC. But where the information in this blog is coming from? These data are coming from a server located in a country. In the same way you can see the information on the screen with your phone loaded from that server. Or when you see a YouTube video or look at a website, it is associated with all information from different servers. Whenever you receive an email or when you send an e-mail anywhere, you also exchange information over the Internet.This is how we accomplish the activities on the internet.
In the preceding era,we would send different information from one place to another through post and letter. But now we do the same thing through the Internet. Now think, I want to send you a letter, but what do I have to do? I need your home address then i can send any information to you by mentioning your name, your locality name, your police station, your post office, your district etc. Depending on the place and the different countries, the type of address must be different. But since the internet is using all over the world and the whole world send their information from one place to another, it is necessary to get a specific address to exchange those information. And this particular address is called IP address. The full name of the IP address is "Internet Protocol Address". Protocol means a specific rule that is used by everyone to establish relationships with each other in a certain format and it will be separate from everyone.
Types of IP Addresses | IPv4 and IPv6
A common IP address has four sections. And in each section has a limitation from zero to 255. This is a 32-bit dependent addressing system. An example of this address is "202.18.32.103". Everyone have an unique IP address when he connect to the internet. And this common address is called IPv4 address. It is the 4th generation or 4th version of Internet Protocol Addresses. But this IPv4 has some limitations as it can only generate just four billion unique IPs [IPv4 address limit "4,299,967,266].And if you want to create more than four billion addresses then It will start generating the same IP from the beginning. But here the subject that everyone must have unique address and this will go against the rule of this protocol. Maybe when the IPv4 system was created for the first time the authority could not imagine that how many IP addresses would be needed in near future. Today's IPv4 address limit is four billion which is almost gone. And we do not have a new address at all.
That's why we upgraded a new system, which is named IPv6. It's an addressing system of 128 bits. An example of this is "3ffe: 1900: 4545: 3: 200: f8ff: fe21: 67cf". And with the help of this addressing system, we can generate roughly "340,2282366,920,938,463,463,374,607,431,768,1111456" unique addresses.Could you say the number ? That means, if every human being has a few million device through this system, it would not be possible to end up using unique address. But sadly, today we do not use IPv6, we only use IPv4. Because in order to use IPv6, your internet service provider, your modem or router, and website hosting servers also need to use IPv6 together. For this we do not use IPv6 yet.
We use less than 1% of total IPv6 address. Moreover, we all use IPv4. For your knowledge, IPv6 is not just a different addressing format. The packet size of your data and the format of your data are much more efficient than IPv6 compared to the IPv4. Additionally IPv6 helps you to increase your internet performance. Now it is a time to see from when we would start using this addressing system.
Since the limit of IPv4 is over, how is it used today in new device?
Whenever I said that the IPv4 limit is only up to 4 billion and we have consumed all the IPv4 addresses, a question may be peep up in your mind that how new devices are generating new unique IP addresses? As the list is gone.
So to solve this problem, we have created a technique called NAT (Network Address Translation). The devices like laptop,cell phone or TV that connected in your router have a IP address similar to that- Your mobile's IP address 192.168.0.20 or your laptop's address 192.168.0.25 or your TV's address 192.168.1.40. So this is the address you have start from 192.168.This is called your local IP address, which your router or modem gives to your devices. But the external address is always one. To make it easier to understand, suppose you request a website from a phone connected to a router and also request a YouTube video from a laptop in the same router, so the requests will be from the same address to the web server.In the same manner, your router also know from which device these two different requests were made and accordingly it shows the different data to that particular device.However there are many addresses hide behind an IP address in NAT system henceforth we have been working on those four billion addresses till now.
If you want to check the IP address of your device, normally enter Google and go to the search bar and type "What is my IP". You will find your address directly in search results. There are some people who use the internet by changing their original address, and think that no one else can trace them. In fact, it is a misconception that you couldn't be caught even if you do it by changing address in anyway. So forget about any kind of bad things to change address. And that would be good for you.
hope you have been aware of all the issues of IP address. Know what it does, how it works, why it is necessary and what kind of types. If you have any question about this topic, please give me a comment and you must share this post with your friends.