How many binary digits does an IP address consist of?

The IP address is composed of 32 or 128-bit binary numbers. IP address is a unified address format provided by the IP protocol. There are two types of IP addresses: 1. IPv4 address, which consists of 32-bit binary numbers, expressed in dotted decimal notation, divided into eight bits, that is, four 0~255 Decimal number; 2. IPv6 address consists of 128-bit binary number, expressed in dotted hexadecimal, divided into eight bits, that is, sixteen hexadecimal numbers from 0x00 to 0xff.

The operating environment of this tutorial: Windows 7 system, Dell G3 computer.

IP address (Internet Protocol Address) refers to the Internet Protocol address, also translated as Internet Protocol address.

The IP address is a unified address format provided by the IP protocol. It assigns a logical address to each network and each host on the Internet to shield the differences in physical addresses.

There are two types of IP addresses: ipv4 address and ipv6 address.

• An IPv4 address consists of a 32-bit binary number, while an IPv6 address consists of a 128-bit binary number.

• IPv4 addresses are binary numbers expressed as decimals. IPv6 addresses are binary numbers represented in hexadecimal notation.

What is ipv4

Internet Protocol Version 4 (English: Internet Protocol version 4 (IPv4), also known as the fourth version of the Internet Communication Protocol, is the fourth revised version in the development process of the Internet Protocol and the first widely deployed version of this protocol. IPv4 is the core of the Internet and the most widely used version of the Internet Protocol. Its successor version is IPv6. Until 2011, when the IANA IPv4 addresses were completely exhausted, IPv6 was still in the early stages of deployment.

The IPv4 address is 32 bits, expressed in dotted decimal notation, divided into eight bits, that is, four decimal numbers from 0 to 255, which is very common.

IPv4 uses 32-bit (4-byte) addresses, so there are only 4,294,967,296 (2) addresses in the address space. However, some addresses are reserved for special purposes, such as private networks (about 18 million addresses) and multicast addresses (about 270 million addresses), which reduces the number of addresses that can be routed on the Internet. As addresses continue to be allocated to end users, the problem of IPv4 address exhaustion is also arising. Address structure reconstruction based on classified networks, classless inter-domain routing, and network address translation significantly reduces the rate of address exhaustion. But on February 3, 2011, after the last five address blocks had been allocated to the five regional Internet registries, IANA's main address pool was exhausted.

These limitations have spurred the deployment of IPv6, which is still in its early stages of development and is the only long-term solution.

Address Format

An IPv4 address can be written in any form that represents a 32-bit integer value, but to facilitate human reading and analysis, it is usually written in dotted decimal notation form, that is, the four bytes are written separately in decimal notation, separated by dots.

The following table shows several different formats:

In addition, in dotted format, each byte can be expressed in any base. For example, 192.0x00.0002.235 is a legal (but not commonly used) representation.

What is ipv6

IPv6 is the abbreviation of "Internet Protocol Version 6" in English and is an Internet engineering task The next-generation IP protocol designed by the IETF to replace IPv4 has a number of addresses that it claims can provide an address for every grain of sand in the world.

The biggest problem of IPv4 is the insufficient network address resources, which seriously restricts the application and development of the Internet. The use of IPv6 can not only solve the problem of the number of network address resources, but also solve the obstacles for multiple access devices to connect to the Internet.

IPv6 is designed to replace IPv4. However, IPv4 has still occupied a dominant position in Internet traffic for a long time, and the use of IPv6 has grown slowly. In April 2022, the percentage of users using Google services through IPv6 exceeded 40% for the first time.

The IPv6 address is 128 bits, which is 4 times the length of the IPv4 address. It is generally expressed in dotted hexadecimal, divided into eight bits, that is, sixteen hexadecimal numbers from 0x00 to 0xff. .

An IPv6 IP address consists of 8 address sections, each section contains 16 address bits, and the total length is 16x8=128 bits.

So the IPv4 dotted decimal format is no longer applicable and is expressed in hexadecimal.

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