The Network layer only has 1 protocol worth mentioning, and that is the Internet Protocol
The IP layer is what allows for addressing. There are 2 forms the IP layer takes on. That is IPv4 and IPv6.
Encapsulation Protocols
Encapsulation on the Network layer, unlike Data Layer Encapsulation, is not restricted to the specific hardware it is on. All the IP is, is just a method of addressing a specific device, so it would not make sense to base it off any specific hardware. Thus, Each device can use either of these Encapsulation methods: IPv4 and IPv6
IPv4 and IPv6 have different methods of encapsulation of packets. This is stemmed from the fact that IPv4 and IPv6 have different methods of writing IP addresses.
For example, IPv4 has 256^4 possible IP address combinations. *.*.*.* they are 32bit addresses
IPv6 can have around 79228162514264337593543950336 possible IP address combinations. Each Ip address is stored in hex and divided 4*8 format.
And example IPv6 can look like this:
