What is the primary difference between IPv4 and IPv6?

The primary difference between IPv4 and IPv6 lies in their addressing capabilities. IPv4 utilizes a 32-bit address space, which limits the number of unique IP addresses it can generate to about 4.3 billion. This number, while significant in the early days of the internet, has proven insufficient to accommodate the vast growth of devices connected to the internet.

On the other hand, IPv6 was developed to address this limitation by implementing a 128-bit address space. This allows for a staggering number of unique addresses—approximately 340 undecillion, which is enough to assign a unique address to every device on the planet many times over. This expansion not only provides more addresses but also facilitates more efficient routing and better performance in networking.

The other options, while touching on aspects of the differences, do not capture the fundamental distinction regarding the size of the address spaces used by each protocol. For instance, IPv4 does not use 64-bit addresses, and although the support for more devices in IPv6 is implied, it stems primarily from the expanded address space, making this option too broad. Additionally, while MAC addresses and their relation to IPv4 and IPv6 are relevant to networking, they don’t accurately reflect the core distinction between the two IP