In this post I will show an example configuration to setup a static IP address for a Windows XP computer. Similar settings are used for almost all Windows versions. Lets start:

Step 1: Locate “My Network Places” icon on your desktop, right click and select properties. A new window (see below) will show you all network connections.

Step 2: Right click on “Local Area Connection” and select “Properties” (a new window as shown below appears)

Step 3: Highlight “Internet Protocol (TCP/IP)” and click on “Properties” (a new window as shown below appears)

Step 4: Select the Radio Button “Use the following IP address” and fill out the static IP address, the subnet mask and the default gateway for your specific Network setup. The default gateway is the IP address of your local router.

Step 5: Select also “Use the following DNS server addresses” to configure the DNS server that will be used in your network.

In our example above we used an IP address of 192.168.1.100 which is in the range of private addresses (for more info on private addresses see other posts in this site). The subnet mask (255.255.255.0) shows that the range of valid addresses that can be assigned in this network is between 192.168.1.1 up to 192.168.1.254. The default gateway address shows that our network router is 192.168.1.254, and also the local DNS server is 192.168.1.1 (note that the DNS server address in our example shows that this server is located on the local network. For a home PC, this DNS IP will be the address of your ISP DNS server).

IPv6 addresses are 128 bits long-much longer than the current 32-bit IPv4 address. As we know, the 32-bit IPv4 address scheme supports around 4 billion IP addresses. The new IPv6 version, will support 2 to the 128th power of IP addresses, which is a number that even mathematicians will have a hard time to count!!

The IPv6 address version was designed by the IETF (Internet Engineering Task Force) not only to expand the available address space, but to also incorporate support for new features such as IPSEC security and easier network management through autoconfiguration.

The IPv4 address format was represented as 4 decimal octets in the form of AAA.BBB.CCC.DDD (for example 192.168.100.15). The IPv6 address format is totally different and can be written in the following ways:

In full hexadecimal format, the address is written as eight groups of four hexadecimal digits, with colons separating the groups. For example,
1111:2222:3333:4444:5555:6666:7777:8888 represents a single IPv6 host.
• Leading 0s can be omitted in any group. For example,
1111:0200:0030:0004:5555:6666:7777:8888 can also be written as
1111:200:30:4:5555:6666:7777:8888.
• Because IPv6 addresses are so long and the address space is so large, addresses with many embedded 0s are common. Therefore, you can abbreviate any number of contiguous 0s as a double colon (::), even if the 0s cross a digit group boundary. For example, 1111:0:0:0:0:0:0:8888 could also be written as 1111::8888. This abbreviation can be used only once in an address, however.
• IPv6 addresses can also be shown with a network prefix. This specifies how many most significant bits are used to represent a network address. This is very similar to IPv4 addresses, where the address and prefix values are separated by a slash (/). For IPv6, this format is also ipv6_address/prefix_length, where the prefix length is a value from 1 to 128 bits.