The IP is the most significant of the entire TCP/IP suite, an IP is responsible for: IP addressing, host-to-host communication, packet formatting, and fragmentation. An IP address is used to identify each computer and also to determine the route to a computer.
IPv4 and IPv6
IPv6 is the newer version of IP, IPv6 provides larger address space, improved security, simplified header format, enhanced reliability and more.
Challenges for IPv6
However, because IPv4 works so well, techniques such as NAT are used and are so widely deployed, it is taking a very long time to switch over to IPv6. This is despite all systems having it available and all routers implementing it.
IPv4
The fourth version of IP (IPv4) was deployed in 1982. IPv4 addresses are 32-bit integers that have to be expressed in decimal notation. It is represented by 4 numbers separated by dots in range of 0-255, which have to be converted to binary to be understood by computers.
EXAMPLE IPv4
128.11.3.31
IPv6
IPv6 is based on IPv4 and is better than it in terms of complexity and efficiency. IPv6 is written as group of 8 hexadecimal numbers separated by colon (:). It can be written as 128- bit of binary.
EXAMPLE IPv6
ABCD:EF01:2345:6789:ABCD:B201:5482:D023
IP datagram structure
IP header
The IP header contains control and addressing information required for routing and delivering the packet. It composes source and destination IP addresses, packet length, checksum mechanism, and more.
Fragmentation
IP packets are designed to carry data, but they also support fragmentation. If a packet is too large to be transmitted over a particular network segment (e.g., due to Maximum Transmission Unit limitations), it can be fragmented into smaller packets. There are some other fields in the header help manage this process.
Checksum
Checksum is a error detection technique used to verify integrity of data during transmission. The checksum mechanism is included in the IP header.
Routing
IP packets are routed through networks based on the destination IP address. Routers examine the destination address and make decisions on how to forward the packet toward its final destination. Optimal path finding algorithms involve to consider number of hops (network devices), link bandwidth, latency, and more.
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