Internet Protocol Version 4 (IPv4) is the fourth revision of the IP and a widely used protocol in data communication over different kinds of networks. IPv4 is a connectionless protocol used in packet-switched layer networks, such as Ethernet. It provides the logical connection between network devices by providing identification for each device. There are many ways to configure IPv4 with all kinds of devices - including manual and automatic configurations - depending on the network type.

In Internet protocol specifications, the term "host" means any computer that has full two-way access to other computers on the Internet. A host has a specific "local or host number" that, together with the network number, forms its unique IP address. If you use Point-to-Point Protocol to get access to your access provider, you have a unique IP address for the duration of any connection you make to the Internet and your computer is a host for that period. In this context, a "host" is a node in a network.

CIDR (Classless Inter-Domain Routing, sometimes called supernetting) is a way to allow more flexible allocation of Internet Protocol (IP) addresses than was possible with the original system of IP address classes. As a result, the number of available Internet addresses was greatly increased, which along with widespread use of network address translation (NAT), has significantly extended the useful life of IPv4. CIDR notation is a syntax for specifying IP addresses and their associated routing prefix. It appends a slash character to the address and the decimal number of leading bits of the routing prefix, e.g., 192.168.2.0/24 for IPv4, and 2001:db8::/32 for IPv6.

IPv6 is the Internet's next-generation protocol, designed to replace the current Internet Protocol, IP Version 4. In order to communicate over the Internet, computers and other devices must have sender and receiver addresses. These numeric addresses are known as Internet Protocol addresses.

Without IPv6, we would soon hit the upper limit of connectable devices. IPv4, the current standard, offers only 4.3 billion addresses and they're getting gobbled up.It's a real problem for businesses that want to set up new Internet services or for carriers that want to sell another few million smartphones.

An IPv6 address has eight groups of hexadecimal characters (the numbers 0–9 and the letters A–H) separated by colons—for example, 3ffe:ffff:0000:2f3b:02aa:00ff:fe28:9c5a. The leading zeroes in a section can be suppressed—for example, 3ffe:ffff:0:2f3b:2aa:ff:fe28:9c5a.

IPv6 was designed to be more secure than IPv4. But it wasn't hard. "IPv4... was designed with no security in mind. [IPv6] is certainly no less secure, and a bit more secure at the network level."

A double colon indicates that part of the address containing only zeroes has been compressed, to help make the address shorter. For example, this IPv6 address: fe80:0:0:0:2aa:ff:fe9a:4ca2 could be written like this: fe80::2aa:ff:fe9a:4ca2.

A proxy or proxy server is basically another computer which serves as a hub through which internet requests are processed. By connecting through one of these servers, your computer sends your requests to the proxy server which then processes your request and returns what you were wanting.