The industry skipped from IPv4 to IPv6, leaving IPv5 and the Internet Stream Protocol to the annals of history — a data streaming experiment rendered unnecessary by broadband

News
By published

IPv5 wasn't a general purpose Internet Protocol like IPv4 or IPv6, and was never ratified as such, but it would give birth to the first VOIP hardware.

IPv5 - a dead branch
(Image credit: Future)

The Internet as we know it was born through a series of unexpected developments in networking technology. So it isn’t very surprising that, along its crooked growth trajectory, there were several rather fruitless branches. One such branch was the Internet Stream Protocol (ST), which is also sometimes referred to as IPv5, as tech tidbits Twitterer Laurie Wired recently highlighted. However, the industry has skipped IPv5, moving directly from IPv4 to IPv6, leaving it as a forgotten protocol.

IPv4 and IPv6

IPv4 was established as the first version of the Internet Protocol back in 1982/83. It used 32-bit addressing to provide about 4.3 billion unique IP addresses, but developers quickly realized that the explosive growth of the Internet meant the humongous number would be exhausted in due course.

IPv6 would ride in, like a knight on a white charger, in 1989 (adoption grew post 2000) with 128-bit addressing to provide approximately 340 undecillion addresses, which should be enough for anyone. It also introduced IPsec security, simpler headers, and better mobile device support. Nevertheless, for reasons such as easier configuration, reduced complexity, legacy support, and human readability, the dwindling IPv4 pool has remained a preferred choice.

Internet businesses have had decades to get on board the IPv6 train, but still resist and pay heavily to do so. Earlier this year, we reported on the increasing value of IPv4 addresses. In fact, companies are now accepting IPv4 addresses as collateral to borrow millions of dollars.

IPv5 wasn’t a Goldilocks solution

We’ve seen some organizations have a strong desire to hang onto IPv4 and a resistance to moving wholesale to IPv6. However, IPv5 wasn’t an idyllic middle ground, sharing some advantages of both these protocols. Rather, it was used solely as an experimental branch, almost contemporaneously with the introduction of IPv4.

(Image credit: Daderot, public domain image)

IPv5’s special, flavour-dominating sauce was reliable data streaming using 32-bit addressing. Prototype equipment for Network Voice Protocol (NVP) over Internet Stream Protocol (ST) telephony was made, as shown above. So, its streaming abilities were tested to support an embryonic VOIP feature.

But IPv5 wasn’t a replacement for IPv4; more of an extension that ended up being pruned as an unnecessary limb. The superfluousness of its architecture became apparent when broadband technologies came along to solve the problems of bandwidth and latency. IPv5 was proposed to crack.

Though IPv5 wasn’t a general-purpose Internet Protocol, it took the v5 designation in development documents. It was never ratified as a global protocol, but to avoid confusion, we moved straight to IPv6 as IPv4’s genuine successor.

Google Preferred Source

Follow Tom's Hardware on Google News, or add us as a preferred source, to get our latest news, analysis, & reviews in your feeds.

TOPICS
Mark Tyson
Mark Tyson
News Editor

Mark Tyson is a news editor at Tom's Hardware. He enjoys covering the full breadth of PC tech; from business and semiconductor design to products approaching the edge of reason.

5 Comments Comment from the forums
  • vanadiel007
    You know what, I never questioned why 4 to 6. Never questioned where 5 was.
    Learn something new every day!
    Reply
  • ozadam
    I was the product manager for ST2/IPv5 at Wellfleet Communications in the 90s. We implemented ST2 and it was used in production in relatively large network at US DoD, dont think I can describe exactly who and the use case.
    Reply
  • Sam Hobbs
    This article implies that IPv6 came before IPv5.

    IPv5 used the same 4-byte values that IPv4 uses. ChatGPT says there is nothing that IPv5 can do that could not be done with IPv4 (with some insignificant exceptions).
    Reply
  • lpaln
    The problem with IPv4 is not that we don't have addresses, but that companies are totally abusing the IP addresses that we do have.

    To be clear at the top level, IPv4 supports 4.6 billion networks. A single IP address is simply a gateway to another local network. Using port forwarding, you can have a DNS server, a web server, A VPN server, etc, etc, etc all using 1 Public IP address. In the simplest setup, you need 1 IP for each connected webserver (using port 80) but even this is easily worked around. By using reverse proxies or load balancers, you can be running hundred of servers running thousands of sites all behind a single IP address.

    Like I said the problem is companies abusing the IPs they own. Circa 2010, I got a network admin job working for a company with about 150 clients and a dozen or so servers. They owned not one, but TWO class B segments. That is 255x255X2 externally routeable addresses. They were using private reserved internally (10.x.x.x) and needed maybe 5-6 external IPs without using any workarounds. In a small company, this was an easy fix for me. I dumped the entire segments, saved the company a bunch of money and kept a single /24 which was still greedy on my part.

    Flash forward about 10 years and I am working in a very large company and they own, get this, a class A network. 1/255 of all the internet addresses in the world belong to them. What do they do with them? Every single client in the company is assigned a public address. If you're following me here, as you can imagine, these clients are not externally accessible. They are just passing out public IPs to internal clients and the firewalls won't route them. I was working in another area in IT at this point, but I brought this up to the global network leads and they basically laughed me off. How dare I apply common sense?

    Totally wasteful. If you want to see what the real issue with IPv4 is, some school somewhere should do a survey. I'd be really curious to know out of all the public addresses available, how many of them are actually connected and serving anything. 1%? 2%? Who knows. My whole point is that the reason we are short on IPv4 addresses is because they are being used incorrectly, and being hoarded and abused by ISPs and large companies.
    Reply
  • Zeus574
    I find it kind of funny that companies use them as collateral, but my ISP just hands them out to customers for no charge. Even better is it's a static IP for a residential account.
    Reply