As a professional domain name investor, “IPv4” is a term you should be familiar with, even though it’s not directly involved in the buying and selling of domain names.
IPv4 stands for Internet Protocol Version 4. It’s the fourth version of the Internet Protocol (IP), which is the set of rules that govern how data is sent and received over networks. IPv4 is the most widely used version of IP, and it defines an IP address as a 32-bit number.
These addresses are typically expressed as four numbers separated by periods, each ranging from 0 to 255, like ‘192.168.0.1’. This system allows for approximately 4.3 billion unique addresses, a limit that has been largely exhausted due to the growth of the internet.
In the context of domain investing, IPv4 is relevant because every website on the internet is hosted on a server with an IP address. When someone types a domain name into their web browser, the Domain Name System (DNS) translates that domain name into the IP address of the server where the website is hosted.
While as a domain investor, you don’t deal directly with IP addresses or IPv4, understanding how they work can provide a deeper understanding of the broader internet infrastructure that underpins the value of domain names.