An IP (Internet Protocol) address is a string of numbers that are used to help computers communicate with each other in a network. Within any network each IP address will be unique and will consist of a series of numbers divided by full stops.
Within a typical home network IP addresses will be issued to devices using something called DHCP, or Dynamic Host Configuration Protocol. A DHCP server is usually found on your router, and can assign up to 254 IP addresses to any devices connecting to a home network. Usually the IP address that DHCP will issue, will be a number anywhere between 192.168.xxx.2 and 192.168.xxx.255.
As the internet is just a massive network of computers, the internet also needs to use IP addresses. However, unlike a home network, the internet will need to use more than 255 unique IP addresses that a DHCP server can generate. So it uses Internet Protocol version 4. which is able to use 4,294,967,296 unique IP addresses.
The problem with this is that because the internet has grown so large. IPv4 does not have enough IP addresses for all the world’s devices. So IPv6 was created to give the internet 340 undecillion unique addresses to use.
You might find that your Internet Service Provider (ISP) has given you either an IPv4 or IPv6 address. You can tell the difference because of how an address has been formatted. For example IPv4 uses a series of 12 numbers divided by dots (xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx) . While IPv6 will use a combination of numbers and letters divided by colons. For example something like this: 2001:db8:3333:4444:5555:6666:7777:8888
