gistfile1.txt

When Internet Protocol was originally implemented, the designers were struggling to get TCP to do both data packaging (host level) and data transmission (network level) in a single step. Their solution was to separate these two functions into two ‘layers,’ one being TCP (for packaging), and one being IP (for transmitting). 

So there was never an IPv1 or IPv2, just a TCP version 1 and 2, at which point they were separated and both became version 3 in 1977. Then, IPv4 emerged as a stabilized version of IPv3, and became the most widely implemented protocol for managing device addresses on the internet. 

IPv5 was a (failed) attempt to solve some of the data quality issues of IPv4 and transmit ‘voice’ data over “packet-switching networks.” 

And now we’ve arrived at IPv6, which solves the problems of uniquely addressing a growing number of internet connected devices.