Random IP Address Generator

What is a random IP generator?

A random IP generator (like this one) is a free-to-use tool that generates valid random IP addresses in both the IPv4 and IPv6 formats. Creating fake but valid IP addresses is useful in many applications such as testing, simulations, or generating sample data. Our tool generates IPv4 addresses from 0.0.0.0 to 255.255.255.255.

What is an IP address?

An IP address, also known as an Internet Protocol address, is a unique numerical label assigned to each device that is connected to a computer network. This includes when your computing device, such as a laptop, mobile, or tablet connects to the internet. In order for the device to communicate with other computers on the same network (the internet), each is provided with an IP address. This address is unique to the device and allows them to send and receive data over the network. Without a unique IP address, other computers on the network won't know where to send the information too, and vice versa.

What is an IPv4 address?

IPv4 (Internet Protocol version 4) is the fourth version of the Internet Protocol. Having been superseded by the next version, IPv6, and IPv4 addresses are still used today. The version of the IP determines how the address is formatted. In the case of version 4, it has four decimal numbers separated by periods. In technical terms, IPv4 addresses are 32-bit numerical numbers and because of this, they have a maximum limit of addresses that can be assigned before running out of numbers.

How many IPv4 addresses are there?

As an IPv4 is a 32-bit numerical number, there are a total of approximately 4.3 billion unique IP addresses. However, due to the huge growth the internet has been year-on-year, this number is now insufficient as there are more devices than unique IP addresses available. Because of this address exhaustion, the internet now also uses IPv6 addresses.

What is an IPv6 address?

IPv6 (Internet Protocol version 6) is the latest version of the Internet Protocol. They work the same way as IPv4 (assigning unique addresses to each connected device), unlike IPv4 addresses however, IPv6 addresses are 128-bit numerical numbers, using hexadecimal notation. Because of this wider scale of available unique numbers, they can assign a significantly larger number of devices at any one time.

How many IPv6 addresses are there?

Because of the much larger scale of IPv6, it allows for a significantly larger amount of unique IP addresses. Approximately that accommodates around 340 undecillion unique IP addresses (which when written down is; 340,282,366,920,938,463,463,374,607,431,768,211,456). That's an insanely big number and we'll never run out of addresses again.

What is the difference between an IPv4 and IPv6 address?

The main difference between IPv4 and IPv6 addresses is the address length. IPv4 addresses are 32 bits in length, while IPv6 addresses are 128 bits long. IPv4 addresses use decimal notation while IPv6 addresses use hexadecimal. IPv4 is separated by dots whereas IPv6 is separated by colons. IPv4 includes a checksum field in its header whereas IPv6 doesn't. This change was made to IPv6 to reduce processing overhead and improve efficiency.