Internet Protocol version 6 (IPv6) is the latest IP revision, developed as a successor to IPv4. I recently heard a quote from the esteemed Geoff Huston that it would take three times the age of the universe to actually scan all the IPv6 addresses on a 48 bit IPv6 subnet if you were scanning at a million addresses per second. IPv6 addresses use 128 bits to represent an address which includes bits to be used for subnetting. The scope of the link-local address is only its respective link. With a bit of creative programming, it would only take 69000 years to scan all the IPv6 addresses on a 48 bit IPv6 subnet if you were scanning at a million addresses per second. This implies that each device connected to the Internet using IPv6 has available 2 to the 64th power (18,446,744,073,709,551,616) IP addresses. IPv6 addresses have scope (link-local, site-local and global) and may have all three addreses and multiple global IPv6 addresses. Just how many IPv6 addresses are there? For all multicast addresses, the prefix field holds the binary value 11111111. Addresses are matched to prefixes based on the longest matching most-significant bit-sequence. Common & reserved prefixes in IPv6 addresses Because of the huge amount of possible IPv6 addresses, and since the format of IPv6 is 16 hexadecimal values (grouped in eight 16-bit groups) instead of IPv4's more simple 4 decimal groups, developers of the standard came up with ways to shorten them. Out of these, the cookies that are categorized as necessary are stored on your browser as they are essential for the working of basic functionalities of the website. The big difference between it andIPv4 is the increase in address space. The Hawthorne effect is the modification of behavior by study participants in response to their knowledge that they are being A marketing-qualified lead (MQL) is a website visitor whose engagement levels indicate they are likely to become a customer. The top-level exhaustion of the IPv4 actually occurred during 2011. I thought Id check out the maths, and hopefully come up with a more comprehensible number. The total pool, however, is sufficient for the foreseeable future, because there are 2128 (exactly 340,282,366,920,938,463,463,374,607,431,768,211,456) or about 3.41038 (340 trillion trillion trillion) unique IPv6 addresses. The one thing we should be concerned with as it pertains to IPv6 are the vulnerabilities that were mentioned about possible attacks being tunneled through IPv6 onto IPv4 networks. The well-knownloopback address in IPv6 is ::1/128. Leading zeros in each 16-bit field are suppressed, but each group must retain at least one digit. I'll let Richard tell the story in his own words: "I was teaching at Motorola University circa 1998 and in discussing IPv6, a student said, 'You know, there are enough IP addresses in IPv6 for every square inch of the Solar System.' Anycast addresses are syntactically identical to and indistinguishable from unicast addresses. 1 How many possible IPv6 addresses exist? This routing is called Classless-InterDomain Routing (CIDR). The 54 zeroes that follow make the total network prefix the same for all link-local addresses (fe80::/64 link-local address prefix), rendering them non-routable. Root name servers have been assigned addresses from the range 2001:7f8::/29.[24]. What is the formula for calculating solute potential? Performance cookies are used to understand and analyze the key performance indexes of the website which helps in delivering a better user experience for the visitors. An IPv6 address with a prefix is written as an IPv6 address followed by a decimal number representing the number of bits in the address that constitute the prefix. This manufacturers ID is known as an OUI (Organization Unique Identifier). What could we compare it to in real-world terms? For this, a multicast address is used, formed from the network prefix ff02::1:ff00:0/104 and the 24 least significant bits of the address. . These addresses allow link layer address resolution via Neighbor Discovery Protocol (NDP) on the link without disturbing all nodes on the local network. 2 raised to the power of 128 is indeed 340,282,366,920,938,463,463,374,607,431,768,211,456. Now we have this giant number but no real concept of what it means. How many IP addresses does IPv6 support? Hope this all helps you grasp the number 340,282,366,920,938,463,463,374,607,431,768,211,456. This cookie is set by GDPR Cookie Consent plugin. How many IP addresses does IPv6 support? IPv6 has enough addresses to give every atom in the solar system its own unique address. A typical IPv6 address may appear as: 2004:0cb8:82a3:08d3:1319:8a2e:0370:7334. An IPv6 address looks like this: 2620:cc:8000:1c82:544c:cc2e:f2fa:5a9b. a) begin with either a 2 or a 3 as the most significant hexadecimal digit, and Note: In most cases, the lifetime does not expire because new Router Advertisements (RAs) refresh the timers. [1] For each of the major addressing and routing methodologies, various address formats are recognized by dividing the 128 address bits into bit groups and using established rules for associating the values of these bit groups with special addressing features. This has the disadvantage that multiple multicast groups need to be joined for neighbor discovery. In addition, the scope field is used to identify special multicast addresses, like solicited node. There are not anywhere near 2^22 manufacturers of networking equipment on the planet, so maximum number of IPv6 addresses per SLAAC subnet is more like 2^22 x (the number of registered vendor OUIs). The linux kernel has a feature called AnyIP which allows you to answer for a contiguous block of IPv4 or IPv6 addresses via your linux loopback interface for very little cost in DRAM/CPU.. For instance, assume I want my linux machine to answer for any address in 10.7.0.0/16: On the linux system add a local route: ip -4 route add local 10.7.0.0/16 dev lo Not routable. Functional cookies help to perform certain functionalities like sharing the content of the website on social media platforms, collect feedbacks, and other third-party features. If your ISP supports IPv6, they will automatically assign you at least 2^64 addresses, which is the minimum for a single LAN (really!). Share Improve this answer Follow answered Sep 30, 2015 at 14:12 Spiff 99.5k 17 168 222 You can and you should. Service Providers have to stop worrying about running out of addresses and plan for /48 allocations to end user. Hence, total number of addresses possible in IPv4 = 232 = 4,294,967,296 In IPv6, an IP address is 128 bits long, hence the total number of unique addresses possible in IPv6 = 2128 = 3.41038 This, scheme allows many more devices to be allocated IP addresses. This cookie is set by GDPR Cookie Consent plugin. Copyright Teracom Training Institute. So I finally decided to calculate IP addresses per grain of sand over the entire surface of the Earth, including under the oceans, one mile deep assuming 10,000 grains of sand per cubic inch. You dont need to use a /64. That is 340 times 10 to the 36th power, or 340 trillion trillion trillion possible IP addresses. IPv4 had the ability to supply a total of 4 billion unique IP addresses, which back then was an unthinkable number and it was far from anyones thoughts that we would ever run out. However, there are many other differences between the two protocol addresses. We dont know what the world will be like 50 or 100 years from now. The number of available addresses is only limited by the current IP technology in use. 666 Billion addresses per grain of sand in the Earth's crust, to a depth one mile deep, all around the globe Once you VPN to a network, you will get a third IPv6. The DNS protocol is independent of its transport layer protocol. (Can you tell Richard is an Engineer?) IANA currently allocates addresses from the prefix 2000::/3 to the regional providers. As in IPv4, each host is represented in the DNS by two DNS records: an address record and a reverse mapping pointer record. Its big grains of sand dont even enter into it. Asmall portion of the addresses starting with 000 and 111 are allocated for special types. 2^128. The unspecified address is used by the Operating Systems in the absence of any valid IP address and processes like DHCP. IPv6 was designed in a way to eliminate the tension between these two requirements. IP addresses are usually written in human-readable form, where 8 bits are grouped into one octet. "Nearest" typically means the one with the best routing metric according to the IPv6 routing protocol. But then I did the calculations on scanning 2^41 addresses at million addresses per second, and the answer is more like a mere 69,683 years! Advertisement cookies are used to provide visitors with relevant ads and marketing campaigns. Actually you can have as many as you like per interface. The four-bit scope field (sc) is used to indicate where the address is valid and unique. IPv6 protocol, which is 128-bits, consists of eight numbered strings, each containing four characters (alphanumeric), separated by a colon. This way, communication can be set up between trusted addresses exclusively. Begin typing your search term above and press enter to search. IPv4 addresses are usually written as a group of four numbers. Its quad-A address record is. The size of a block of addresses is specified by writing a slash (/) followed by a number in decimal whose value is the length of the network prefix in bits. . 3.) Analytical cookies are used to understand how visitors interact with the website. Network address ranges are written in CIDR notation. Gordon Fyodor Lyon of Nmap fame tells how devices can be discovered, https://docs.google.com/viewer?url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.ofcom.org.uk%2Fstatic%2Farchive%2Foftel%2Find_groups%2Fnicc%2FPublic%2Fopen_forums%2Fnov01%2Fimarshall.ppt, Do you put version numbers in MS Word Documents? Configuring the same unicast address to more than one interface makes it an anycast address. As we have already learned - there is no broadcast in IPv6. ", "First I had to decide what 'square inches of the Solar System' meant. IPv6 uses a 128-bit address which allows for 2128 , or approximately 3.4 x 1038 addresses. All well-known multicast addresses start with the prefix ff00::/12. For IPv6 addresses, modify the IP addresses as needed. In IPv6, an IP address is 128 bits long, hence the total number of unique addresses possible in IPv6 = 2128 = 3.41038 This, scheme allows many more devices to be allocated IP addresses. So your wifi and cellular will have two different ones. There are many ranges of addresses permanently assigned for multicasting functions. How do I configure email on my iPhone using Outlook. 1) There are total of 35 subsets with 4 elements with no repetition. To add a new IP address follow these steps below: Step 1: Go to the control panel and search for change adapter settings there will be two options: Ethernet and Wifi. The full representation of eight four-digit groups may be simplified by several techniques, eliminating parts of the representation. It has a globally unique prefix similar to global unicast addresses. Suppose it wants to use addressable nanotechnology to control the grey goo it is using to build it. [43] Lifetimes can be configured in routers that provide the values used for autoconfiguration, or specified when manually configuring addresses on interfaces. It's easy to get lost in so many binary digits but the math is all the same. Scheduled Public Seminars, Live Online and In-Person, Private Courses Live Online and In-Person, The best in telecom training and certification - since 1992. The segments are separated by colons - not periods. A device can have more than one interface An interface can be assign by : One ipv4 address and one ipv6 address with one ip gateway and more than one ip dns Have nice day, ty Share Improve this answer Follow answered Jun 27, 2021 at 5:57 Iskandar 1 1 An interface can have more than one IPv4 and IPv6 address. IANA provides global unicast addresses that start with leading leftmost bits 001. Benefit from decades of knowledge, insight and experience distilled into clear lessons designed for nonengineers, logically organized to build one concept on another in plain English. It does not store any personal data. An IPv4 address is 32 bits and expressed in dotted-decimal notation, whereas an IPv6 address is 128 bits in length and written in hexadecimal. According to Reserved IP addresses there are 588,514,304 reserved addresses and since there are 4,294,967,296 (2^32) IPv4 addressess in total, there are 3,706,452,992 public addresses. This website uses cookies to improve your experience while you navigate through the website. The IP address of the destination is used to make decisions about routing IP . 2^125 is still a very big number about 4.210^37 It barely knocked one of the 38 zeros off. When an anycast address is assigned to an interface, like a subnet-router anycast address, duplicate address detection is not performed. In IPv6, the IPv6 address0:0:0:0:0:0:0:1/128 is reserved for loopback identifier. Wow. It would take three times the age of the universe to actually scan all the IPv6 addresses on a 48 bit IPv6 subnet if you were scanning at a million addresses per second. Some common IPv6 multicast addresses are the following: The least significant 24 bits of the solicited-node multicast address group ID are filled with the least significant 24 bits of the interface's unicast or anycast address. IPv6 is our Word of the Day today. I decided to use the surface area of all the planets in square inches. This is my success story. Temporary addresses may be used as source address for originating connections, while external hosts use a public address by querying the Domain Name System. Maybe there is a good reason NOT to allocate a lot a the address space to the humans. Each address includes eight different groups of strings, and every group has four characters (alphanumeric), divided by a colon. The resulting hash value is used to construct the final address: Typically the 64 least significant bits are concatenated to the 64-bit network prefix, to yield a 128-bit address. There's no official switch-off date, so people shouldn . An anycast address is assigned to a group of interfaces, usually belonging to different nodes. An IPv4 address is of the form XXX.XXX.XXX.XXX where XXX is . The number is a unique code the Internet uses to connect us all. Good comment. Application threats these address as regular global IPv6 ones. This represents an astronomical increase in address size from 4,294,967,296 seen in IPv4 to over 340 trillion, trillion, trillion. Available in scope 1 (interface-local) and 2 (link-local): Available in scope 1 (interface-local), 2 (link-local) and 5 (site-local): The hexadecimal digits are always compared in case-insensitive manner, but IETF recommendations suggest the use of only lower case letters. It allows sites to beinterconnected without creating any address conflicts. Well, the total number of IPv6 addresses is a staggering 340 undecillion !! IPv6 includes new address types as well as changes to familiar address types. Each network interface (Ethernet, Wi-Fi, cellular, etc.) With the first 3 bits set to 001, and 64 bits reserved for the interface identifiers, that still leaves enough bits for2^61 networks. When one or more four-digit groups within an IPv6 address contain only zeros, the numbers may be represented by two side-by-side colons (::). You can tell that 1234:5678:9::A and 234:5678:9::A are not a valid public IPv6 address simply because the first begins with a 1 and the second has only 3 digits in the first hextet. AnycastFor a set of interfaces on different physical media. As a means to enhance security for Neighbor Discovery Protocol cryptographically generated addresses (or CGAs) were introduced in 2005[46] as part of the Secure Neighbor Discovery (SEND) Protocol. However, I want to push the point that there are still enough addresses even if we allocate every household/business a /48. In the computer world, loopback addresses are typically used for testing the TCP/IP networking stack. For example, [44] To reduce the prospect of a user identity being permanently tied to an IPv6 address portion, a node may create temporary addresses with interface identifiers based on time-varying random bit strings[45] and relatively short lifetimes (hours to days), after which they are replaced with new addresses. So lets look at the addresses (or more accurately the subnetworks) within the IPv6 minimum allocation. You are a brave soul for trying to tackle that one. Anycast addresses cannot be identified easily, they have the same format as unicast addresses, and differ only by their presence in the network at multiple points. How many IPv6 addresses are there in 32? It would be worth while searching for Ian Marshalls presentation titled, Why IPv6 Address Space is Too Small or Most people dont understand big numbers., He makes a stunning claim: IPv6 Network Operators will experience political, technical and commercial constraints similar to those caused by IPv4 address exhaustion, within a decade., Heres the link to the article: https://docs.google.com/viewer?url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.ofcom.org.uk%2Fstatic%2Farchive%2Foftel%2Find_groups%2Fnicc%2FPublic%2Fopen_forums%2Fnov01%2Fimarshall.ppt. Therefore, this is how you calculate how many IP addresses there are in an IPv6 /64 block: 2 (128-block) = IP addresses 2 (128-64) = IP addresses 264 = 18,446,744,073,709,551,616 IPv6 /64 18 quintillion IP addresses There are 3.410^38 IPv6 addresses. These cookies track visitors across websites and collect information to provide customized ads. All Rights Reserved, Could this be true? One or more IP ranges. To unassign an IPv6 address, choose Unassign next to the address. How many possible IPv6 are there? You misinterpreted the quote. There are two lifetimes that govern the state of an address: the preferred lifetime and the valid lifetime. But, they will likely only ever use a /64 unless they have multiple routers and are routing internally (figure the odds on that for most residences, and even most small businesses). How many possible IPv6 addresses are there? 128 So actually how many Internet Protocol addresses are there under the new IPv6. A multicast address can not be asource address of a packet. There are 128 bits in one IPv6 address. But Im not game enough to tackle that one! Scopes for anycast addresses are therefore the same as for unicast addresses. In fact, a /60 is recommended for residences. ARIN then allocates sub-parts of this address space 2001:18::/23 to ISPs and large customers. Internet Exchange Points (IXPs) are assigned special addresses from the ranges 2001:7f8::/32, 2001:504::/30, and 2001:7fa::/32[23] for communication with their connected ISPs. Link-local addresses and the loopback address have link-local scope, which means they can only be used on a single directly attached network. Lifetimes are infinite, unless configured to a shorter period. [10] Although numeric zone indices must be universally supported, the zone index may also be an implementation-dependent string. Link-scoped multicast addresses use a comparable format.[5]. Hertz is the standard unit of frequency in the IEEE 802 is a collection of networking standards that cover the physical and data link layer specifications for technologies such Security orchestration, automation and response, or SOAR, is a stack of compatible software programs that enables an organization A digital signature is a mathematical technique used to validate the authenticity and integrity of a message, software or digital Sudo is a command-line utility for Unix and Unix-based operating systems such as Linux and macOS. It turns out my embellishment was not wrong: there are 5 million addresses per square inch on the sphere that encloses the solar system out to Pluto. No more assignments from this range are made, so values 0x00 through 0x7d are reserved as well. But there is another thing to consider. It is used as a more efficient approach to IPv4's broadcast delivery. For example, the configuration of an interface with address 2001:db8:a::123 connected to subnet 2001:db8:a::/64 is written as 2001:db8:a::123/64. Addresses used in documentation and example source code, All nodes address, identify the group of all IPv6 nodes. Unicast and anycast addresses are typically composed of two logical parts: a 64-bit network prefix used for routing, and a 64-bit interface identifier used to identify a host's network interface. Fig. (Comparable with the 'proof of work' field in Bitcoin mining.) The Internet Assigned Numbers Authority(IANA) allocates only a small portion of the whole IPv6 space. The lower 64 bits of these addresses are populated with a 64-bit interface identifier. The IPv6 address size is 128-bits long, or 16 8-bit octets. IPv6 uses 128-bit (2 128) addresses, allowing 3.4 x 1038 unique IP addresses. Service Providers will not have enough IPv6 addresses to allocate /48 IPv6 prefixes to small businesses and home users. In IPv4 we have class A, class B, and class C. In IPv6 we have only global prefix and Interface ID. In the Domain Name System, hostnames are mapped to IPv6 addresses by AAAA resource records, so-called quad-A records. Therefore, there are 000 IPv6 addresses. IP address planning is certainly among the critical functions required within the overall process of planning and executing an IPv6 deployment project. [26] They represent less than 2% of the entire address space: The multicast addresses ff0x:: where x is any hexadecimal value are reserved[1] and should not be assigned to any multicast group. So how many IP addresses per planet in the entire Universe? This would seem intuitively to align well with the idea of assigning a /48 per site. 5 How many hosts per network can exist in each of the IP address classes AB and C? The colon is conventionally used to terminate the host path before a port number. The idea is to enable nodes attached to a common link to communicate without the need for globally unique addresses. Great and thorough post! Just goes to show you, you never know. '", "Anyway, while flying home I thought, I wonder how many square inches there are in the Solar System anyway. Just BCP, but you can allocate anything you want as long as its at least a /64. For reverse lookup the IETF reserved the domain ip6.arpa, where the name space is hierarchically divided by the 1-digit hexadecimal representation of nibble units (4 bits) of the IPv6 address. The routing prefix of an interface address may be directly indicated with the address using CIDR notation. I think I'll figure that out when I get home. The Internet Assigned Numbers Authority (IANA) manages address reservations.[39]. And too many addresses in this post. Even if a single address is not in use in different zones, the address prefixes for addresses in those zones may still be identical, which makes the operating system unable to select an outgoing interface based on the information in the routing table (which is prefix-based). Each IPv6unicast address has acorrespondingsolicited-node multicast address. The cookie is used to store the user consent for the cookies in the category "Performance". An IPv6 address consists of 128 bits. They are only valid in the scope of an interface. From there you can check if the address is IPv4 mapped, IPv4 compatible, IPv4 translated, and so on (there are many possible ways IPv6 represents IPv4 addresses). In 2009, many DNS resolvers in home-networking NAT devices and routers were found to handle AAAA records improperly. Link local, global, ULA and even random addresses generated from your prefix with privacy extensions. Two important rules apply to IPv4 and IPv6 multicast: There aren't broadcast addressesin IPv6. IPv6 Address Types. I have been using a /112 for routing purposes, but thats just in case I have multiple interfaces. The node also joins the all-hosts multicast address ff02::1, so it will be able to receive Neighbor Advertisements. A host is required to join a solicited-node multicast group for each of its configured unicast or anycast addresses. IPv4 allowed forfour billion IP addresses, which must have seemed like plenty at the time. There are three types of addresses . Thats a lot more, for sure, but what does it look like in numbers? how many possible ipv6 addresses are there how many possible ipv6 addresses are there. In fact, we can subtract even more from this pool, because we know MAC addresses have a specific format where the first 24 bits identify a manufacturer (Actually, only 22 bits identify the manufacturer, 2 bits are reserved). And indeed, if you assume that it is possible to use all 2^64 addresses in a subnet, it would indeed take 38 billion years to scan all possible addresses. There are three main types of addresses as shown in Figure 2: Aggregatable global unicast addresses are part of the global routing prefix. It has a globally unique prefix similar to global unicast addresses. These addresses make it possible to combine or interconnect sites privately without creating address conflicts and without the necessity of renumbering interfaces. Copyright 1999 - 2023, TechTarget In IPv4, typical "configuration protocols" include DHCP or PPP. IPv6 addresses An Ipv6 address uses 128 bits as opposed to 32 bits in IPv4. I did some calculations and the mass of the solarsystem excluding the sun is roughly 2.6*10^27 kg. First of all, let's discuss the basics of IPv6 address and at the end of this post, I will share How to do IPv6 Address shortening or how to write IPv6 address in short form. The address with value 0x7e in the 7 least-significant bits is defined as a mobile IPv6 home agents anycast address. IPv6 implements first 64-bit for network address while remaining 64-bits are reserved for . Popular prefix size for one subscriber site, 256 times larger than the minimum IPv6 allocation. They are stable within a specific network but change when moving to another, to improve privacy. For mitigation of these complications, the IETF has defined a canonical format for rendering IPv6 addresses in text:[8]. The prefix field contains the binary value 1111111010. Where autoconfiguration is used, it was once common for operating systems to derive a Layer 3 IPv6 address in part from the Layer 2 MAC address. The sc(ope) field holds the binary value 0010 (link-local). Let me explain. Do Not Sell or Share My Personal Information, Steve Leibson takes a shot at putting it in real world terms, Unlock the Value Of Your Data To Harness Intelligence and Innovation, Intel Takes on Device Manageability at the Root, Supply Chain Transparency Matters Now More Than Ever. How many possible IPv6 addresses exist? A solicited-node multicast address is generated automatically using an IPv6 unicast of an interface. After all, one needs IPv6 address space in order to implement IPv6 and current IPv4 space must be managed in conjunction with the addition of IPv6 space. As you may already know, in IPv4there are several well-known multicast addresses in the range 224.0.0.0/24. Mobile IPv6 addresses can also be permanent (home address) or multiple care-of addresses. Internet Protocol version 6 (IPv6) is the most recent version of the Internet Protocol (IP), the communications protocol that provides an identification and location system for computers on networks and routes traffic across the Internet.IPv6 was developed by the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) to deal with the long-anticipated problem of IPv4 address exhaustion, and is intended to . Each IPv6 set represent 16 bits (4 characters at 4 bits each). It is implementation specific, but it is recommended to use at least the network prefix, the name of the network interface, a duplicate address counter, and a secret key. That number looks like this: 340,282,366,920,938,463,463,374,607,431,768,211,456. For example, the network written as 2001:db8:1234::/48 starts at address 2001:db8:1234:0000:0000:0000:0000:0000 and ends at 2001:db8:1234:ffff:ffff:ffff:ffff:ffff. Every interface with IPv6 is required to have a link-local FE80 address, and there's an algorithm that defines which address of those multiple addresses to use as source address. No, hes got to take it to the atomic level. Similar concept to 169.254.0.0/16 in IPv4. Necessary cookies are absolutely essential for the website to function properly. Types of IPv6 Addresses Static Routing Dynamic Routing Transition Mechanisms - Translation NAT64 / DNS64 Transition Mechanisms - Tunneling 6to4 Tunneling 6in4 Tunnels - Hiding IPv6 packets inside IPv4 packets 6rd - IPv6 Rapid Deployment Auto-configuration of Network Settings SLAAC - StateLess Address AutoConfiguration For this reason, Microsoft implemented a transcription algorithm to represent an IPv6 address in the form of a domain name that can be used in UNC paths. This is equal to 340 trillion trillion trillion IP addresses. Answer (1 of 4): A device? It is written as: ipv6-address/prefix-length. : In Microsoft Windows operating systems, IPv4 addresses are valid location identifiers in Uniform Naming Convention (UNC) path names. That's 340,282,366,920,938,463,463,374,607,431,768,211,456 addresses. Therefore the request will be processed only by the targeted node and not by all node attached to the link as it happens with broadcasted ARP in IPv4. The solution to this IP address shortage is migrating to IPv6. ", "Answer: an astounding 664 BILLION IP addresses per grain of sand. It is RFC 6164 that suggest using /127 for Inter-router links, but this is NOT suggesting that customers be allocated a /127 slice, although I am fearful that some service providers may take it this way. Answer: 3.4 quadrillion IP addresses per planet! This should be a pseudo-random number for privacy reasons. They are assigned whenever you join a network. An IPv4 address has 32 bits, so there are 2 32 (over 4 billion) possible IPv4 addresses. To assign an IPv6 address, choose Assign new IP address and then specify an IPv6 address from the subnet range or let AWS choose one for you.