Editing Internet (section)

====IPv4====
[[IPv4|Internet Protocol version 4]] (IPv4) defines an IP address as a [[32-bit]] number.<ref name="rfc791"/> IPv4 is the initial version used on the first generation of the Internet and is still in dominant use. It was designed in 1981 to address up to ≈4.3&nbsp;billion (10<sup>9</sup>) hosts. However, the explosive growth of the Internet has led to [[IPv4 address exhaustion]], which entered its final stage in 2011,<ref>{{cite web|last=Huston |first=Geoff |title=IPv4 Address Report, daily generated |url=http://www.potaroo.net/tools/ipv4/index.html |access-date=20 May 2009 |url-status=live |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20090401001902/http://www.potaroo.net/tools/ipv4/index.html |archive-date=1 April 2009 }}</ref> when the global IPv4 address allocation pool was exhausted.