The Internet Protocol

In the previous chapter, we got a comprehensive understanding of two of the most common and robust protocols in the transport layer of the Open Systems Interconnection (OSI) network stack, with the Transmission Control Protocol (TCP) and User Datagram Protocol (UDP). In this chapter, we'll look at the network layer protocol that enables each of those two transport layer services. In this chapter, we'll be learning about the Internet Protocol (IP). We'll look at how the IP standard has evolved to support a global network of billions of devices, allowing each of them to reliably communicate with one another. We'll consider the earlier, and more common IPv4, looking at what problems IPv4 was designed to solve, and discussing the limitations that it has reached. Next, we'll examine how IPv6 aims to solve those limitations. Finally, we...