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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.
A separate protocol based on reliable connections was developed and assigned version 5. IP version 7 was chosen in 1988 by R. Ullmann as the next IP version because he incorrectly assumed that version 6 was in use for ST-II. However, ST-II had reused version 5 of the original ST protocol. [5]: 7
In the original design of IPv4, an IP address was divided into two parts: the network identifier was the most significant octet of the address, and the host identifier was the rest of the address. The latter was also called the rest field. This structure permitted a maximum of 256 network identifiers, which was quickly found to be inadequate.
Internet Protocol version 4 (IPv4) defines an IP address as a 32-bit number. [77] IPv4 is the initial version used on the first generation of the Internet and is still in dominant use. It was designed in 1981 to address up to ≈4.3 billion (10 9) hosts.
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 ...
An IP address is part of a CIDR block and is said to match the CIDR prefix if the initial n bits of the address and the CIDR prefix are the same. An IPv4 address is 32 bits so an n -bit CIDR prefix leaves 32 − n bits unmatched, meaning that 2 32− n IPv4 addresses match a given n -bit CIDR prefix.
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IP addresses in dot-decimal notation are also presented in CIDR notation, in which the IP address is suffixed with a slash and a number, used to specify the length of the associated routing prefix. For example, 127.0.0.1/8 specifies that the IP address has an eight-bit routing prefix, and therefore the subnet mask 255.0.0.0 .