Details of IP addressing

Every computers in a network are identified using IP (Internet Protocol) addresses. At now
we are using the IP version4 (IPv4). In near future we will shift to IPv6.
? What is an IP address
A : An IP address is a unique number assigned to each network device by a special protocol and format to identify a computer in the whole network.
IPv4
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An IPv4 address consists of four bytes (32 bits). These bytes are also known as octets.
Its format is as shown below
10.0.0.1
This is the form we see. But the computer will view it as….
00001010 00000000 00000000 00000001
This is because computer only knows binary form.
In Ipv4 each octect can varies from 0 to 255. So the max of IPv4 addressing is
255.255.255.255
IP V4 is classified to following categories:
Class A
Class B
Class C
Class D
Class E
This classification is based on the number of network bits on the octets.
Class A format is like this:
255.0.0.0
That is first octet is used for identify the network.
Class B format is like this:
255.255.0.0
Class C format is like this:
255.255.255.0
Both class D and class E are used for different purpose other than creating computer networks.
IPv6
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This is the next generation of IP format.
IP addresses change significantly with IPv6. IPv6 addresses are 16 bytes (128 bits) long rather than four bytes (32 bits). This larger size means that IPv6 supports more than
300,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 possible addresses.
IPv6 addresses are generally written in the following form:
hhhh:hhhh:hhhh:hhhh:hhhh:hhhh:hhhh:hhhh
In this full notation pairs of IPv6 bytes are separated by a colon and each byte in turns is represented as a pair of hexadecimal numbers, like in the following example:
E3D7:0000:0000:0000:51F4:9BC8:C0A8:6420
Shorthand notation in IPv6 removes these values from the text representation as follows:
E3D7::51F4:9BC8:C0A8:6420
We can see IPv6 is an extention of IPv4, so the last 4 bytes of IPv6 can be rewritten in IPv4 format.