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What is IP Address?
IP Address (Internet Protocol Address) is an exclusive number assigned to various devices (like printers, routers, modems, etc.) in order to identify them and to communicate with them on the computer network (internet or intranet). In layman’s term it is similar to address of home or office of a person.
IP Address Classification:
Static IP Address: When a computer is configured to use the same IP address each time it powers up, this is known as a Static IP address. Static IP Address is fix, in contrast to a dynamic IP address. Static IP addresses in general, are manually assigned to a computer by an administrator.
Dynamic IP Address: Dynamic IP address is not fix and may change at any time. This IP address is issued by ISP (Internet Service Provider) from a pool of IP addresses. Generally computer automatically gets dynamic address as user logs on to the ISP's network, so that user need not know the details of network configuration. Usually a dial-up connection, wireless connection etc. use dynamic IP Address.
IP Address Versions:
IP version 4 addresses (IPv4): It uses 32-bit addresses and are usually represented in dotted-decimal notation as four numbers, each ranging from 0 to 255, separated by dots, e.g. 147.132.42.18). Here each range from 0 to 255 can be represented by 8 bits, and hence known as an octet. The use of 32 bits limits the number of addresses to 4,294,967,296 (i.e. 2^32) possible unique combinations, however, some of these are reserved for special purposes such as private networks, hence number of addresses that can be allocated as public internet addresses reduce.
IP version 6 addresses (IPv6): IPv6 is the next generation of the Internet Protocol, designed to replace IPv4 on the Internet. These addresses are 128 bits wide and hence number of possible unique combinations for IPv6 addresses is about 3.403 × 1038 (i.e. 2^128). An example of an IPv6 address is 2001:0db8:85a3:08d3:1319:8a2e:0370:7334.
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