The Internet Protocol (IP) is the transmission mechanism used by the TCP/IP protocols. IP is an unreliable and connectionless datagram protocol. IP provides no error tracking or error checking. IP assumes the unreliability of the underlying layers and does its best to get a transmission to destination but without guarantee.

When it comes to important of reliability, IP get combined with a reliable protocol like TCP. The best example of IP in general life is “Post Office”. Post office tries to deliver a letter on its best. But if any letter is lost the post office is not going to inform sender about the loss of letter.

Internet Protocol (IP) is also a connectionless protocol. Means each data packet handle as indecently. Each data packet can be follow different route to reach destination. Hence this may happen that the data packets reaching at destination are not in order. And may some packets are lost or damage while transmitting. IP relies on higher level protocol to take care of all these incidents.

Till today there are six versions of IP we will look into last three versions.

IP version 4: Most of the networks on the internet are currently using version 4. The main problem with version 4 is that the internet address in just 32 bit in length and the address space is divided into different classes. Because of the very fast growth of the internet this scheme of addressing cannot handle the number of internet users.

IP version 5: IP version was proposal based on the OSI model. This version never went beyond the proposal stage because of extensive layer changes and the projected expenses.

IP version 6: After version 5 IETF designed a new version next to version 5 called as IP version 6. IP version 6 also called as “IP next generation”. This version uses 128 bits means 8 group of 16 bits addresses hence it can handle larger number of users. Also the packet format in IP version 6 is has been very simplified hence there is lots of scope for addition of new features in future. It also supports Confidentiality, authentication and integrity. Mainly it is design to handle multimedia like audio and video.

IP address, IP versions, IPv4, IPv5, IPv6, Inetenet Protocol

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