The designers of TCP/IP defined an IP address as a 32-bit number, known as Internet Protocol Version 4 (IPv4) (Source: Wikipedia). Unfortunately, with the global demand for the internet increasing every day, the people who maintain the system realized the number of addresses would be quickly over run. How many addresses could be made up using the IPv4 system?
The new system uses 128-bit numbers. How many addresses are possible under this new system?
well with 32-bits, there is 2^32 diff combo's
ReplyDelete2^32 is 4,294,967,296 combinations...over 4 billion
so with 128 bit...wow...that's a lot more lol, 2^128 is
3.4028236692093846346337460743177e+38...wow...there's not even a word to describe how big that number is...wonder what was wrong with 64-bit addresses.
I think it was a matter of implementation (I'm not really informed on this, btw), but I think they just skipped up to ipv6.
ReplyDeleteI can see why 4 billion was not even close to enough, though. Everything seems to have its own ip address these days, from the toaster oven to the wall socket to the computer.