Determining size of IP header. Why is it different from others?

Question

Look at this code segment:

if(ip_header->protocol == IPPROTO_TCP)
 {
   tcp_header = (struct tcphdr*)(packet + sizeof(struct ethhdr) + ip_header->ihl*4);

    /* Print the Dest and Src ports */

   printf("Source Port: %d\n", ntohs(tcp_header->source));
   printf("Dest Port: %d\n", ntohs(tcp_header->dest));

  }

What i am confused is, in case of determining the size of other headers we normally do, sizeof(struct tcphdr) or sizeof(struct ethhdr) but for IP header size, we don't do sizeof instead we do ip_header->ihl*4. Why is it so? Also what is this 4 for?

Here is how the struct declaration of IP heder:

00116 struct iphdr {
00117 #if defined(__LITTLE_ENDIAN_BITFIELD)
00118         __u8    ihl:4,
00119                 version:4;
00120 #elif defined (__BIG_ENDIAN_BITFIELD)
00121         __u8    version:4,
00122                 ihl:4;
00123 #else
00124 #error  "Please fix <asm/byteorder.h>"
00125 #endif
00126         __u8    tos;
00127         __u16   tot_len;
00128         __u16   id;
00129         __u16   frag_off;
00130         __u8    ttl;
00131         __u8    protocol;
00132         __u16   check;
00133         __u32   saddr;
00134         __u32   daddr;
00135         /*The options start here. */
00136 };

Answer 1

It's a problem of different units of measurement. The IHL field in the IP header is defined like this:

Internet Header Length is the length of the internet header in 32 bit words.

And this size isn't fixed (because of valid but discouraged IP options). So one packet could have IHL=5, the next could have IHL=6 and so on.