IPV6 stores 128 bits each and IPV4 stores 4 bytes If there are 4 billion numbers stored, how much more memory (in gigabytes) would it take to store all 4 billion numbers with IPV6 instead of IPV4. SHOW YOUR WORK BY UPLOADINGA PICTURE OF HANDWRITTEN WORK.
The Correct Answer and Explanation is:
📌 Calculation
Step 1: Understand the storage size
- IPv6 address size = 128 bits = 16 bytes
- IPv4 address size = 4 bytes
Step 2: Determine the number of addresses
- 4 billion = 4,000,000,000 addresses
Step 3: Total storage for 4B addresses
- Using IPv4:
4 bytes × 4,000,000,000 = 16,000,000,000 bytes - Using IPv6:
16 bytes × 4,000,000,000 = 64,000,000,000 bytes
Step 4: Find the difference
- Difference =
64,000,000,000 - 16,000,000,000 = 48,000,000,000 bytes
Step 5: Convert bytes to gigabytes
- 48,000,000,0001,073,741,824≈44.7\frac{48,000,000,000}{1,073,741,824} \approx 44.7 GB
✅ Answer: Approximately 44.7 GB more memory is needed to store 4 billion IPv6 addresses than IPv4 addresses.
🧠 Explanation
IPv4 and IPv6 are two different internet protocol versions used for assigning addresses to devices on a network. IPv4 uses 32-bit addresses, which equals 4 bytes (since 1 byte = 8 bits). On the other hand, IPv6 uses 128-bit addresses, which equals 16 bytes. This means that IPv6 addresses take up 4 times more memory per address compared to IPv4.
When storing large numbers of IP addresses, this difference adds up significantly. If we are storing 4 billion IP addresses, we need to calculate how much total memory would be required in each case.
For IPv4:
4 billion addresses × 4 bytes = 16 billion bytes.
For IPv6:
4 billion addresses × 16 bytes = 64 billion bytes.
Now, subtract to find the extra memory required by IPv6:
64 billion – 16 billion = 48 billion bytes.
To convert bytes to gigabytes (GB), we divide by 1,073,741,8241,073,741,824, which is the number of bytes in 1 GB. This gives approximately 44.7 GB. So, storing 4 billion addresses in IPv6 format would use about 44.7 GB more memory than storing the same number in IPv4 format.
This shows one of the trade-offs when transitioning from IPv4 to IPv6. While IPv6 solves address exhaustion and offers other benefits like improved routing and security, it also requires more memory, which can impact storage and processing performance in some systems.
