Which statement about IP addressing is true?

Which statement about IP addressing is true?

• A. It's stored by DNS
• B. It's random
• C. It's hierarchical (in order of importance)
• D. It's used for routing only in IPv6

Answer: (C)

IP addresses are designed with a hierarchy to support scalable routing. The parts of an address specify a network prefix, which lets routers forward packets toward large chunks of the Internet without needing a separate route for every single address. For example, in IPv4, a block like 192.168.0.0/16 represents many addresses within a single network, allowing a router to advertise one route that covers all of them. In IPv6, long prefixes such as 2001:db8::/32 do the same job, enabling efficient aggregation of routes. DNS isn’t the place that stores the addressing structure itself; it translates domain names to IP addresses, but the hierarchy and allocation of IPs are handled by the addressing system and registry organizations. Addresses aren’t random; they’re allocated in blocks to reflect networks, regions, and organizations, which is what makes hierarchical routing possible. Routing happens in both IPv4 and IPv6, not just IPv6, relying on the address prefixes to determine the next hop.

IP addresses are designed with a hierarchy to support scalable routing. The parts of an address specify a network prefix, which lets routers forward packets toward large chunks of the Internet without needing a separate route for every single address. For example, in IPv4, a block like 192.168.0.0/16 represents many addresses within a single network, allowing a router to advertise one route that covers all of them. In IPv6, long prefixes such as 2001:db8::/32 do the same job, enabling efficient aggregation of routes.

DNS isn’t the place that stores the addressing structure itself; it translates domain names to IP addresses, but the hierarchy and allocation of IPs are handled by the addressing system and registry organizations. Addresses aren’t random; they’re allocated in blocks to reflect networks, regions, and organizations, which is what makes hierarchical routing possible. Routing happens in both IPv4 and IPv6, not just IPv6, relying on the address prefixes to determine the next hop.