HISTORY AND FEATURES

History:

• First Invented in 1960s and 1970s for the Department of Defense


• Adopted as Military Standard in 1983


• First version was IPv2.0, which allowed for 255 hosts on the network


• Current version is IPv4.0 which allows for 4,294,967,296 hosts


• Next version is IPv6.0 which allows for several hundred billion hosts

Features:

• Open protocol standards. And architecture independance


• Media independance


• Common addressing scheme


• Standardized high level protocols. All of the protocols can be found in IETF RFCs

Drawbacks:

• Not designed for security, so protocols are inherently insecure. Security features have had to be added in over the existance of IPv4.