WHAT IS A NETWORK OR IP ADDRESS?

 

NETWORK AND IP ADDRESS

An Internet Protocol address (IP address) is a numerical label assigned to each device connected to a computer network that uses the Internet Protocol for communication. An IP address serves two main functions: host or network interface identification and location addressing. A network address is any logical or physical address that uniquely distinguishes a network node or device over a computer or telecommunications network. It is a numeric/symbolic number or address that is assigned to any device that seeks access to or is part of a network.

To facilitate communicating between multiple interconnected networks, the IP address is broken into two parts. One part is the network address, and the other part is the local address. Each network has a unique network address, and every device on that network has the same network address portion in its IP address.

 

IP VERSIONS

There are two versions of IP that currently coexist in the global Internet: IP version 4 (IPv4) and IP version 6 (IPv6). IP addresses are made up of binary values and drive the routing of all data over the Internet. IPv4 addresses are 32 bits long, and IPv6 addresses 128 bits long.

IPv4 is 32-Bit IP address whereas IPv6 is a 128-Bit IP address. IPv4 is a numeric addressing method whereas IPv6 is an alphanumeric addressing method. IPv4 binary bits are separated by a dot(.) whereas IPv6 binary bits are separated by a colon(:).

 

BINARY DIGITS

A binary digit, or bit, is the smallest unit of information in a computer. It is used for storing information and has a value of true/false, or on/off. An individual bit has a value of either 0 or 1, which is generally used to store data and implement instructions in groups of bytes.

The technology of reading and storing only two states is referred to as binary technology. All numbers and letters are also changed into binary code before being stored in a computer.

For example, counting from 0 to 10 in binary looks like this: 0, 1, 10, 11, 100, 101, 110, 111, 1000, 1001, 1010.

IP ADDRESS CLASSES

With an IPv4 IP address, there are five classes of available IP ranges: Class A, Class B, Class C, Class D and Class E, while only A, B, and C are commonly used. Each class allows for a range of valid IP addresses, shown in the following table.

Class	Address range	Supports
Class A	1.0.0.1 to 126.255.255.254	Supports 16 million hosts on each of 127 networks.
Class B	128.1.0.1 to 191.255.255.254	Supports 65,000 hosts on each of 16,000 networks.
Class C	192.0.1.1 to 223.255.254.254	Supports 254 hosts on each of 2 million networks.
Class D	224.0.0.0 to 239.255.255.255	Reserved for multicast groups.
Class E	240.0.0.0 to 254.255.255.254	Reserved for future use, or research and development purposes.

Ranges 127.x.x.x are reserved for the loopback or localhost, for example, 127.0.0.1 is the loopback address. Range 255.255.255.255 broadcast to all hosts on the local network.