FAQs

In this section you can find IPv6 Frequent Answers and Questions (FAQs).

Question: What is the IP protocol?
Answer: IP is the acronym of "Internet Protocol". This protocol was designed in 70's with the purpose of connecting computers that were in separate networks. Since then, computers were connected each other by means of local networks, but theses local networks were separated, representing information island.

Internet, as a name to designate the protocol, and later the worldwide information network, just means "inter network", that is, connection between networks. At the beginning, the protocol had an only military use, but computers from universities, users and enterprises were quickly added.

Internet as worldwide information network is the result of the practical application of the IP protocol, that is, the result of the interconnection of all information networks existing in the world.

Question: What are the IP addresses?
Answer: The IP address is an only identifier that is applied to each device connected to an IP network. This way, different elements taking part in the network (servers, routers, user computers, etc) communicate among them using their IP address as identifier.

In version 4 of the IP protocol (used nowadays) addresses consist of 4 numbers of 8 bits (an 8 bits number take a value from 0-255 range) that they use to be represented separated by points, for example: 155.54.210.63

A version 4 IP address has 32 bits, which is equivalent to 232 different IP addresses (4 billions more or less).

Question: What is IPv6?
Answer: IPv6 is the acronym of "Internet Protocol Version 6". IPv6 is the Internet next generation protocol, which was firstly designated IPng, that is, "Internet Next Generation".

IPv6 is the update of data network protocol in which Internet is based on. The IETF (Internet Engineering Task Force) developed the basic specifications during 90's to substitute the actual version of Internet protocol, IP version 4 (IPv4), at last 70愀.