I.T MAUJANJA

What Is an IP Address?

IP stands for Internet Protocol. An IP address is a unique address used by different computers on a computer network to identify and communicate with one another. So, an IP address is used as an identifier to find electronic devices connected to one another on a network. Therefore, each device in the network must have its own unique address. An IP address is like a mailing address that is used to deliver data, that is, files, to a computer.

Some IP addresses are meant to be unique within the scope of the global Internet, whereas others are meant to be unique within the scope of a specific network. Internet Assigned Numbers Authority (IANA) creates and manages IP addresses for the public Internet. IANA allocates the superblocks of addresses to Regional Internet Registries, which in turn allocate smaller blocks of addresses to Internet service providers.
Static and Dynamic IP Addresses

An IP address could be static or dynamic. If the computer uses the same IP address whenever it connects to the network, then it is said to have a static IP address; if the IP address changes frequently whenever the computer connects to the network, then it is said to have a dynamic IP address. Static IP addresses are manually assigned by the network administrator, whereas the Dynamic Host Configuration Protocol (DHCP) is used to assign dynamic IP addresses. An operating system can also assign itself a dynamic address when a DHCP server and the network administrator are not available. The operating system uses Zero-conf for this purpose. Dynamic addresses are usually used for LANs and broadband networks, whereas static addresses are used to locate servers within an enterprise.

At present, two versions of Internet Protocol are in use: IPv4 and IPv6. IPv4 uses 32-bit addresses, so its address space is limited to 4,294,967,296 unique addresses, with a large part reserved for special purposes. So, fewer addresses are available to be used for the public Internet. IPv6 was designed as a replacement for IPv4, as the addresses are 128 bits wide; so IPv6 offers a large address space.