The Ipv4 Protocol Uses Ip Addresses Which Are How Many Bytes In Length?

The Ipv4 Protocol Uses IP Addresses Which Are How Many Bytes In Length?

We all know that the communication at the network layer is between the host to host i.e one computer to the other computer. A computer at one location wants to communicate with the computer at the other location. The medium of this communication is the Internet. Let us take an example to understand this in detail. Let say when we want to post a mail, we write the senders and the receiver’s address on the card or the envelope. In the same manner, the internet address is required in order to send a message from the sender to the receiver via the internet. This type of address we call the logical address. In the network layer, these addresses are called IP addresses. Suppose If we write the series of the binary bits, let say 1001100101, it is a 10-bit length, in the same way, the IP address can be of 32-bit length or can be a 128-bit length. We call 32 bit IP addresses as the internet protocol version 4 (IPV4) and provides a maximum of 2^32 addresses. The 128 bit IP addresses are called the internet protocol version 6 or the IPv6 addresses and provide a maximum of 2^128 addresses. The IP v6 gives much more flexibility in the IP address allocation in a packet-switched computer network. The data packets in the network layer, we call them the datagrams. The data. Based on the version of the Internet protocol, there are two types of datagrams., the IPv4 datagram and the IPv6 datagram. let us know the format of the IPv4. The below figure represents the IPv4 format in detail.
The version is the 4 bits in length and specifies whether the datagram is in version 4 or not. The IPv4 and IPv6 use different datagram formats. This field helps the internet protocol software running that running on a machine to decide how to process the received datagram. The next is header length which is 4 bits in length, it tells the total length of the IPv4 datagram. one word in IPv4 is 4 bytes in length. The below we have the option filed, which is variable in length, it makes the IPv4 header vary in length and ranges from 20 bytes to 60 bytes. If the option filed is empty the value will be 5 or 0101. The next one is the data payload, the value in the header length filed indicates where the payload begins in the datagram. The payload in the IPv4 datagram is the transport layer segment. The next file is in differentiated services which are 8 bits in length, in this, the first 6 bits are called the code point or the differentiate services code point. And the last bits are used for the explicit congestion notification. Datagram length tells the total length of the IP datagram. The maximum length of the datagram will be 2^16-1, it is rare why largest than the 1500 bytes that allows the IP datagram to fit in the payload section of the ethernet frame.