Latest Developments In IP Address

Ten years ago, not many people had an IP address. But these days, most of us have at least one. And this means that we need to understand what an IP address is and how it works for the sake of our personal privacy and security. An IP address or internet protocol address is a series of numbers used to identify a device on the internet. Like your street number, it’s unique to you and your household since each device has its own number. What is the ip address of the switch virtual interface (svi) on switch0? Answer: 193.74.95.2. 

How many IP addresses are there in my home or office? The number of IP addresses is a threetimes number of human beings. An average device has around 50-60 IP addresses and the number goes up when we talk about smartphones, laptops and routers.

IP addresses are allocated to countries, regions, cities (like Mumbai, Delhi etc), companies and organizations. The record of all the assigned numbers is kept with the Internet Assigned Numbers Authority (IANA). Similar to other countries, we have 192.168.1 IP address range for Indian region-based networks and 10 ranges for city-based networks like 10.10.0 through 10.10. 

An IP address is configured online by the customer or network administrator and is usually in the form of a string of eight numbers separated by periods called octets  in the  Internet Protocol Version 4 (IPv4). Previously, it was just a series of eight numbers – this was simple to memorize and difficult to manage if the server had more than one interface.  Nowadays it’s much easier to manage, as each device holds its own unique value that can be used afterwards for different purposes: routing, QoS, firewall rules etc.

Latest Developments In IP Address :

1. IPv6 :

IPv6 is the replacement for IPv4. IPv4 uses 32-bit addresses, which gives about 4 billion unique addresses. That’s plenty for our purposes, but beginning in 1996, it became apparent that we would probably run out of IPv4 addresses in a fairly short time. Therefore a new version of IP was developed called the “IP Next Generation” or IPv6. This protocol uses 128-bit addresses, which allows a lot more unique IP addresses (340 undecillion, or 340 followed by 36 zeros). As a result, IPv6 is now the predominant protocol used by the Internet.

IPv6 addresses may be used with or without DHCP. In IPv4, DHCP leases an IP address for a period of time known as an “lease time.” When that lease expires, the router reverts to using its preassigned IP. In IPv6, however, a new address is assigned each time an interface is enabled and that address remains valid indefinitely until released by enabling and disabling the interface. 

This extension removes the need for DHCP in a number of environments. For example, residential broadband routers typically use stateful failover functions to provide failover when one of their two interfaces fails (for example due to power failure or other physical reason).

2. IPv6 Security Protection :

IPv6 provides two methods of security: Authentication Header (AH) and Encapsulating Security Payload (ESP). AH is designed to authenticate the IPv6 packets, while ESP consists of security algorithms used to provide confidentiality. The combination of mechanisms provides additional protection against packet modification and eavesdropping.

3. IPv6 Subnetting :

Subnetting is a method of dividing an IP address into smaller blocks or subnetworks. You can have as many subnets as you like, but you need at least two in each network for redundancy using different WAN connections or sites on your LAN for internet connectivity. You can create as many subnets as you like within a network, but you must be able to uniquely identify a subnet by dotted decimal notation (ex. 192.168.1.0/24).

Each of the four blocks (or “Host bits”) of an IP address is known as a host range, and defines which hosts can be assigned to the subnet. In general, the first byte in each block identifies the classful address of that block; this also determines which networks are directly attached to it (for example 192.168.0 for Class B).

4. IPv6 Security Enhancement:

There are two major security enhancements in IPv6: Authentication Header (AH) and Encapsulating Security Payload (ESP). AH is designed to authenticate the IPv6 packets, while ESP consists of security algorithms used to provide confidentiality. The combination of mechanisms provides additional protection against packet modification and eavesdropping.

5. The IPv4 depletion has already started:

The US government is already taking steps towards deprecating IPv4 for their internal networks. This move comes after ARIN (American Registry for Internet Numbers) exhausted its available IPv4 addresses on September 15 2012.

6. The IPv6 deployment is still in a very nascent stage:

Only some US government departments have started deploying it to their networks. There is no mention of IPv6 in most of the customer care support sites on the web, across various industries (real estate, hospitality, etc.) as well as device manufacturers and software providers. With the current rate of IPv4 address depletion, we should start seeing more and more development in IPv6 deployment by service providers and enterprises.