The origins of the Internet Protocol (IP) can be traced back to the 1970s when researchers at the U.S. Department of Defense’s Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) were exploring ways to connect different computer networks together. This led to the development of the Transmission Control Protocol/Internet Protocol (TCP/IP) suite, which became the basis for the modern internet and is now crucial in providing the foundation for communication between different devices connected on the internet, enabling communication on a global scale.
Internet Protocol version 6 (IPv6) is the latest version of IP that is designed to replace the previous version, IPv4, that was released in 1981. To put that into perspective, that’s eight years before Sir Tim Berners-Lee created the World Wide Web in 1989, an advancement that revolutionized how we live, work and communicate. This subsequently led to the exponential growth of connected devices as the internet became more ubiquitous. And since each connected device requires its own unique address, this has resulted in IPv4 address exhaustion.
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