« Back to Glossary Index

Also referred to as “Internet Protocol Address.” Numeric code that uniquely identifies a particular computer on the Internet. Since 1981, IPv4 (version 4) address contains 4 number sequences of 3 digits, each from 0 to 255, separated by a period “.” so that the first possible number is 0.0.0.0 up to a maximum of 255.255.255.255. Although this allows for a maximum of 4.23 billion addresses (32 bits), this number is nearly exhausted and so this number system will be succeeded by IPv6 (or IP6), developed in 1998 and allows for up to 340 undecillion (thousand trillion trillion = 1036) unique addresses using 32 hexadecimals (a hexadecimal character has 16 possible digits: 0123456789ABCDEF).
Examples of each…
§   IP4: 64.65.128.202
§   IP6: 3ffe:1900:4545:3:200:f8ff:fe21:67cf

« Back to Glossary Index