Date First Published: 7th April 2022
Topic: Computer Networking
Subtopic: Internet Protocols
Article Type: Computer Terms & Definitions
Difficulty: MediumDifficulty Level: 5/10
Learn more about what IPv4 is in this article.
Short for Internet Protocol Version 4, IPv4 is the most common type of IP address. It is the fourth version of an IP address that looks like ‘123.321.123’ and it is a 32-bit IP address that contains four strings of unique numbers, separated by full stops that identify a network or server. The numbers of an IPv4 address can range from 0 to 255. IPv4 addresses are assigned to networks, servers, routers, and domain names. For example, every time a website is visited, that website has to perform a DNS resolution, which looks up the IP address assigned to the domain name. That is specified in a DNS record, called an A record.
In order for devices to communicate with other systems on the internet, they must have a unique IP address. The total number of IPv4 addresses available is 4,294,967,296 as 256 x 256 x 256 x 256 is equal to this number. With over 7 billion people in the world and a lot of people having more than one connected device, approximately 4.2 billion addresses are not enough. The solution to this issue is the newer version of IP, called IPv6. An IPv6 address looks like: ‘1234:0fb8:0000:0000:0000:ff00:0012:1234’. It is a 128-bit alphanumeric address that is separated with colons and contains hexadecimal. IPv6 greatly increases the number of available IP addresses. As of now, most systems are assigned an IPv4 address as well as an IPv6 address. However, an advantage of IPv4 is that it is much shorter and easier to memorise than IPv6. But, most people don't ever need to memorise their IP address.
If you are wondering what your IPv4 address is, it can be found by performing a search with: ‘What Is My IP Address’ in a search engine, such as Bing or Google. A helpful website for looking up a certain IP address is this website, whatismyipaddress.com. It is also possible to find out your IPv4 address by going into the network settings of your device.
IPv4 was defined in RFC 791 in September 1981 by the IETF, replacing an earlier definition (RFC 760 in January 1980).
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