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IPv4 – Everything you need to know

Posted on May 23, 2022 by Josh

If you’re looking for an explanation of IPv4, you’ve come to the right spot. We’ll look at its function, as well as its structure and how to check it, in this post.

IPv4 – What is its definition?

IPv4 has been around since the early 1980s, can you believe it? It is the fourth version of the Internet Protocol, first released in 1981. Its goal is to establish communication norms, such as how data packets should be conveyed and how they must be received.

IPv4 has one distinguishing feature: it uses the best-effort delivery approach. It is not necessary to make any last changes between the two ends for the connection to work. Instead, you might try to send a message without waiting to see if it was correctly sent. That is why it is ideal for use on the Internet.

IPv4 addresses are short and straightforward. Therefore, they act as an identification card for any connected host.

Structure

The structure of an IPv4 address is straightforward and looks like this: x.x.x.x. The x represents an octet with a value ranging from 0 to 255. Every IP version 4 address has four octets and three dots because the digits are separated by dots.

It’s a 32-bit number that identifies a network interface on a computer. Every number represents an 8-bit field that represents one byte of an IPv4 address. The dotted-decimal format is commonly used to describe the interpretation of bytes in an IPv4 address.

How to check IPv4?

Finding your IP address is straightforward. A dynamic IP address is one that changes frequently. The following steps will help you determine your computer’s IP address:

  • On Windows

Go to the Start menu and type cmd to launch the Command Prompt. Then type ipconfig into the Command Prompt and press Enter. The data given by the program will include your IP address.

  • On a Mac

Open the Terminal program. To get your public IP address, use the macOS Terminal command curl ifconfig.me. Enter ipconfig getifaddr en0 to find the private Internet Protocol version 4 address.

  • On Linux

To begin, open a terminal window. There are three commands for checking Internet Protocol version 4: “hostname -I,” “ip addr,” and “ifconfig“. Each of these commands returns the IPv4 address. 

Conclusion

IPv4 has evolved over time and has maintained a good reputation. Even though it is still in high demand, this resource has been scarce for a long time. Every day, more devices require connectivity, and IPv4 is already insufficient. We’ll have to upgrade to the latest protocol version sooner rather than later.

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