IPv4 is the fourth version of the Internet Protocol (IP) and the first widely deployed. It uses 32-bit addresses to uniquely identify hosts on a network. The IPv4 packet structure includes a header with fields for source/destination addresses, protocol type, and other routing information. Addressing modes in IPv4 include unicast for point-to-point transmission, broadcast to all hosts on a network, and multicast for group transmission. IPv4 also defines address classes that allocate different numbers of hosts based on network size.