Q: What is the limitation of the IPv4 protocol?
or
Q: What is the IPv4 protocol’s limitation?
Answers
- Does not have any limitations.
- It’s a slow protocol.
- It’s obsolete.
- Its maximum number of IP addresses has been reached.
Explanation: The limited availability of address space is the primary disadvantage of the IPv4 protocol. IPv4 has a 32-bit addressing format, which makes it possible to have around 4.3 billion different addresses. In the early days of the internet, this could have appeared like a very large number; but, as the number of connected devices has skyrocketed, the number of accessible IPv4 addresses has been depleted. As a result, the internet is running out of addresses.
Because there are not enough IPv4 addresses to go around, Network Address Translation (NAT) and other methods for preserving and recycling IPv4 addresses have been developed in response to this problem. However, these are just short-term fixes, and the transition to IPv6 (the next version of the Internet Protocol) is the long-term fix that is being explored to overcome the limitations of IPv4. IPv6 addresses are 128 bits long, which results in an extraordinarily vast address space. This, in turn, makes it possible to have an almost uncountable number of distinct IP addresses.
