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An Internet Protocol address (IP address) is a numerical label such as 192.0.2.1 that is assigned to a device connected to a computer network that uses the Internet Protocol for communication. [1] [2] IP addresses serve two main functions: network interface identification, and location addressing.
Each IP address consists of a network prefix followed by a host identifier. In the classful network architecture of IPv4, the three most significant bits of the 32-bit IP address defined the size of the network prefix for unicast networking, and determined the network class A, B, or C. [3]
Some large / 8 blocks of IPv4 addresses, the former Class A network blocks, are assigned in whole to single organizations or related groups of organizations, either by the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN), through the Internet Assigned Numbers Authority (IANA), or a regional Internet registry.
While IPv4 uses 32 bits for addressing, yielding c. 4.3 billion (4.3 × 10 9) addresses, IPv6 uses 128-bit addresses providing c. 3.4 × 10 38 addresses. Although adoption of IPv6 has been slow, as of January 2023 [update] , most countries in the world show significant adoption of IPv6, [ 10 ] with over 41% of Google's traffic being carried ...
The number of addresses usable for addressing specific hosts in each network is always 2 N - 2, where N is the number of rest field bits, and the subtraction of 2 adjusts for the use of the all-bits-zero host value to represent the network address and the all-bits-one host value for use as a broadcast address. Thus, for a Class C address with 8 ...
Used for link-local addresses [5] between two hosts on a single link when no IP address is otherwise specified, such as would have normally been retrieved from a DHCP server 172.16.0.0/12 172.16.0.0–172.31.255.255 1 048 576: Private network Used for local communications within a private network [3] 192.0.0.0/24 192.0.0.0–192.0.0.255 256
In red, is shown the host part of the IP address; the other part is the network prefix. The host gets inverted (logical NOT), but the network prefix remains intact. However, this does not mean that every address ending in 0 or 255 cannot be used as a host address.
An IP packet is the smallest message entity exchanged via the Internet Protocol across an IP network. IP packets consist of a header for addressing and routing, and a payload for user data. The header contains information about IP version, source IP address , destination IP address, time-to-live , etc.