In the early 80’s of last century, the network Internet protocol IPv4 was developed and adopted. This version was the most successful, so it still exists. 4 bytes are allocated for each IP address. For this reason, our addresses consist of four blocks of decimal numbers and are preferably in the range of 0.0.0.0 to 255.255.255.255. Four groups of 8 bits guaranteed more than 4 billion unique IP addresses with this protocol, to be exact (4,294,967,296) – insanely huge by the standards of those years. At that time it was believed that this would be enough forever and nothing better could be invented. But the Internet grew faster than the most optimistic forecasts, and the number of devices that needed a network address was actively increasing. This was largely due to the advent of broadband internet.
When IPv4 was developed, the main way to access the World Wide Web was through a telephone modem, and there were few devices that were constantly on the network, so fewer addresses were needed. Therefore, in the early 1990s it became clear that in the future free addresses will be exhausted. To solve the global problem, a new version of the network protocol was created – Internet Protocol version 6. In principle, IPv6 can guarantee more than 300 million addresses per capita. 16 bytes (128 bits) are allocated to the IP address instead of 4. Currently, the implementation of IPv6 is taking place everywhere, including in Ukraine.
