What is my IP address?

General info

IPv4 is the fourth version of the Internet Protocol (IP). It uses a 32-bit address space that provides 4,294,967,296 (2³²) unique IP addresses.

Top IP address space owners

27 companies and organizations uses 40 IPv4 /8 blocks, that is 15% of all 256 IP blocks.

Companies and organiztions that owns more then 1 IP block:

1. US Military (Department of Defense) (12 blocks)
2. Level 3 Communications, Inc. (2 blocks)
3. Hewlett-Packard (2 blocks)

Top 3 countries by IPv4 address allocation:

1. United States of America: 1541.6M / 35.9%
2. People's Republic of China: 330.3M / 7.7%
3. Japan 202.2M / 4.7%

875.3M IPv4 addresses are in use by bogon filtering, which are bogus (fake) IP addresses of a computer network. Bogons includes reserved private, non-routable on the Internet, addresses (10.0.0.0/8, 172.16.0.0/12, 192.168.0.0/16) and link-local address (169.254.0.0/16), that should not be globally advertised to the internet.

IPv4 address exhaustion

Original Internet architecture have fewer thatn 4.3 billion addresses available. Top-level address exhaustion occured on 31 January 2011, when last IPv4 185/8 IP block was assigned to RIPE NCC by IANA.

All five Regional Internet Registries have exhausted their address pools:

• APNIC (15 April 2011)
• LACNIC (10 June 2014)
• ARIN (21 April 2015)
• AFRINIC (2019)
• RIPE NCC (25 November 2019)

To delay shortages of IPv4 addresses, new technologies (Network Address Translation (NAT), Classless Inter-Domain Routing (CIDR) and IPv6) and policies (unused IPv4 space reclamation, redistribution IPv4 addresses on the market, new transition mechanisms) were adopted.

General info

IPv6 was developed by Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) to deal with IPv4 exhaustion problem. IPv6 uses a 128-bit addresses allowing 3.4×10³⁸ addresses (2¹²⁸).

Benefits from IPv6 over IPv4:

• Larger address space
• Stateless address autoconfiguration (SLAAC)
• IPsec implementation as IPv6 extension headers
• Simplified packet header and processing them by routers
• Extension headers
• Jumbograms

General info

IANA is a standards organization that controls global IP address allocation, autonomous system number (ASN) allocation, Domain Name System (DNS) root zone managegement, media types (MIME type) and other Internet Protocol related symbols. Currently IANA ia a function of Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) organization. They delegates allocations of IP address blocks to Regional Internet Registries (RIRs).

General info

Five RIRs provides services to administer, manage, distribute and register Internet number resources (address space) to Internet Service Providers and other organizations in their operating regions.

AFRINIC (African Network Information Centre)

Location: Piscataway, New Jersey, United States of America

AFRINIC was founded in 2005. They are responsible for members in Africa.

APNIC (Asia Pacific Network Information Centre)

Location: Brisbane, Queensland, Australia

APNIC was founded in 1993. They are responsible for members in Asia Pacific.

ARIN (American Registry for Internet Numbers)

Location: Chantilly, Virginia, United States

ARIN was founded in 1997. They are responsible for members in United States, Canada, many Caribbean and North Atlantic islands.

LACNIC (Latin America and Caribbean Network Information Centre)

Location: Montevideo, Uruguay

LACNIC was founded in 2002. They are responsible for members in Latin America and the Caribbean.

RIPE NCC (Réseaux IP Européens Network Coordination Centre / European IP Networks)

Location: Amsterdam, North Holland, Netherlands

RIPE NCC was founded in 1992. They are responsible for members in Europe, the Middle East and parts of Central Asia.

The NRO (The Number Resource Organization)

NRO was founded in 2003 as a coordinating body for the five Regional Internet Registrie, which manage the allocation of IP addresses and Autonomous System Numbers.

Here are some interesting trivia facts about IP addresses

IPv4 Exhaustion

IPv4 addresses are 32-bit numbers, but due to the explosive growth of the internet, the available IPv4 addresses are nearly exhausted. This led to the development and adoption of IPv6, which uses 128-bit addresses, providing an astronomically larger pool of available addresses.

Private IP Address Ranges

Certain ranges of IPv4 addresses are reserved for private networks, such as those used in homes, offices, or within organizations. These include addresses starting with 10.x.x.x, 172.16.x.x – 172.31.x.x, and 192.168.x.x. Devices within these networks can communicate with each other using these private addresses without directly being accessible from the internet.

Classful vs. Classless Addressing

Initially, IPv4 addresses were divided into classes (Class A, B, C, etc.), each with predefined ranges for network and host portions. However, this classful addressing scheme was replaced by classless addressing (CIDR - Classless Inter-Domain Routing), which allows for more flexible allocation of IP addresses.

Loopback Address

The loopback address in IPv4 is 127.0.0.1, often represented by the hostname "localhost". It's used by a device to send a message back to itself, typically for testing or troubleshooting purposes.

Link-Local Addresses

IPv4 and IPv6 both have link-local addresses, which are used for communication within a single network segment. IPv4 link-local addresses start with 169.254.x.x, while IPv6 link-local addresses start with fe80::/10.

Dynamic vs. Static IP Addresses

IP addresses can be dynamically assigned (DHCP) or statically configured. Dynamic IP addresses are assigned by a DHCP server on the network and may change over time, while static IP addresses are manually configured and remain constant.

IPv4 and IPv6 Coexistence

Despite the migration towards IPv6, IPv4 continues to be widely used. This has led to various transition mechanisms and technologies to enable the coexistence of IPv4 and IPv6 networks, such as dual-stack implementations, tunneling, and translation mechanisms.

These trivia bits highlight the diversity and complexity of IP addressing in computer networks, playing a fundamental role in connecting devices and facilitating communication across the internet. Fascinating, isn’t it?