IP version 4 designated IP addresses to be 32 bits. It will work fine on a 64 bit OS and a 64 bit processor. It is just how IPv4 works. IPv6 expands this but IPv6 isn't used much.
Here is a quote from the following link:
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IP version 4
Main article: IPv4#Addressing
IPv4 only uses 32-bit (4 bytes) addresses, which limits the address space to 4,294,967,296 (232) possible unique addresses. However, many are reserved for special purposes, such as private networks (~18 million addresses) or multicast addresses (~270 million addresses). This reduces the number of addresses that can be allocated as public Internet addresses, and as the number of addresses available is consumed, an IPv4 address shortage appears to be inevitable in the long run. This limitation has helped stimulate the push towards IPv6, which is currently in the early stages of deployment and is currently the only contender to replace IPv4.
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I hope that helps!
Thanks,
David Davis
Personal Website: <a href="http://www.happyrouter.com">HappyRouter.com - home of Cisco how-to articles & videos</a>
David Recommends:
<a href="http://www.happyrouter.com/ccnavideo">HappyRouter Cisco CCNA & CCNP Video Training Series</a>
<a href="http://www.happyrouter.com/telecom">Cirro - Quote Telecom Internet, Voice, and Data T1 circuits from an unbiased source</a>
Last Wiki Answer Submitted: June 5, 2013 6:59 pm by Michael Tidmarsh14,000 pts.
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