Internet Protocol version 4 (IP Address)

An IP stands for Internet Protocol, which is a numerical label assigned to each device in a network. An IP also known as IP address. An IP address performs mainly two principal functions: network interface identification and location addressing.

An IP is a 32-bit number. These numbers are ranged from 0 to 255 and separated by dots or periods. Each part represents a group of 8 bits (octet). IP addresses may be represented in various hexadecimal, octal, or binary representation. It is also known as Internet Protocol Version 4 (IPv4). An IPv4 address is canonically represented in dot-decimal notation. IP addresses are usually written in human readable symbols, such as 192.168.75.122.

An IP address is divided in two parts: network part and host part. The highest order octet i.e. most significant bits, in an address, were known as the network identifier and the rest of the bits were known as host part and were used for host identification in a network.

For simplicity IP address is divided into 5 classes. The classes of IP address are briefly given below:

Class	Range	Leading bits	Size of network no field	Size of rest bits
A	0-127	0	8	24
B	128-191	10	16	16
C	192-223	110	24	8
D	224-239	For Multicasting	--	--
E	204-255	For Experimental purpose	--	--

The Internet Assigned Numbers Authority (IANA) is responsible for allocation of IP address space globally. There are two versions of IP address: IPv4 and IPv6. We discuss IPv6 in next blog.