IPv4 Overview
IPv4 is an abbreviation of “Internet Protocol Version Four”. It is also known as RFC 719. IPv4 was the fourth generation of Internet Protocol and was also the first version to be widely deployed. The Internet Protocol sits on the third layer of the OSI network model. This is also known as the network layer.
The network layer is the first layer in the OSI which is software based. The network layer or third layer of the OSI model deals with finding, routing and switching for end to end communications, that are not directly connected to each other using a one physical link e.g. an Ethernet cable . The Internet Protocol is the most dominant protocol on the Internet today and usually runs on upper layer protocols such as the Transmission Control Protocol (TCP) and the User Datagram Protocol (UDP). IP networking is an example of connectionless networking service (CLNS).
IPv4 address consists of 32 bits, 4 bytes that are a combination between zeros and ones. The address consists of two parts, the network part and the host address part. Depending on which class the IP address belongs to the amount of network and host bytes differ.
IPv4 Address Structure
