There are 32 binary digits in an IPv4 address.
There are 128 binary digits in an IPv6 address
IPv4 addresses are organized into four 8 bit octets 11111111. 11111111. 11111111. 11111111 each place can represent either a zero or a one. Each place has an assigned binary place value.
1s, 2s, 4s, 8s, 16, 32s, 64, and 128s place right to left and repeating in each octet.
There are 2^32 possible IP addresses = 4,294,967,296 possible addresses; or 4 billion 294 million 967 thousand 296. And they are all used up at this time.
IPv4 addresses can also be written in decimal form. If you add all the place values in a single octet (128+64-32+16+8+4+2+1) it will equal decimal 255.
IPv4 in decimal, as you will see it everywhere except class will look like this 255.255.255.255
Enough on IPv4
There are 128 binary digits in an IPv6 address. Therefore, there are 2^128 possible IPv6 addresses. That is in English is 340 undecillion, 282 decillion, 366 nonillion, 920 octillion, 938 septillion, 463 sextillion, 463 quintillion, 374 quadrillion, 607 trillion, 431 billion, 768 million, 211 thousand and 456 give or take a few.
IPv6 addresses are represented by eight groups of hexadecimal quartets (four of them) separated by colons.
Here is an example of a valid IPv6 address: 2001:cdba:0000:0000:0000:0000:3257:9652
Any four-digit group of zeroes within an IPv6 address may be reduced to a single zero or completely omitted. Consequently, the following IPv6 addresses are alike and equally valid.
2001:cdba:0000:0000:0000:0000:3257:9652
2001:cdba:0:0:0:0:3257:9652
2001:cdba::3257:9652 the omitted zeros have to occur together
2001:cdba…..can be converted to binary or decimal. Note each hex value in each quartet represents 4 binary digits.
Just examining the second quartet in the above address we have
Hex c d b a
bin 1100 .1101 .1011 .1010
Dec 12 13 11 10
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