Short for Internet Protocol, IP

P


Short for Internet Protocol, IP is an address of a computer or other network device on a network using IP or TCP/IP . For example, the number "166.70.10.23" is an example of such an address. These addresses are similar to addresses used on houses and help data reach its appropriate destination on a network.

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. Below is a listing of these addresses.


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.

Ranges 127.x.x.x are reserved for loopback tests, for example, 127.0.0.1. Ranges 255.255.255.255 are used to broadcast to all hosts on the local network.

All IP addresses are broken down into 4 sets of octets that break down into binary to represent the actual IP address. The below chart is a basic example of the basic IP 255.255.255.255.
IP: 255. 255. 255. 255.
Binary value: 11111111. 11111111. 11111111. 11111111.
Octet value: 8 8 8 8

If we were to break down the IP "166.70.10.23", which is the IP address of Computer Hope, you would get the below value.

166. 70. 10. 23
10100110. 01000110. 00001010. 00010111
128+32+4+2=166 64+4+2=70 8+2=10 16+4+2+1=23

There are several IP addresses used or automatically assigned on a network. For example:

166.70.10.0 0 is the automatically assigned network address.
166.70.10.1 1 is the commonly used address used as the gateway.
166.70.10.2 2 is also a commonly used address used for a gateway.
166.70.10.255 255 is automatically assigned on most networks as the broadcast address.