Network, Computer and Programming Resources

Network - IP (Internet Protocol) Address

An IP address is an address for a station or other device on the Internet. This type of address consists of 4 bytes, which are represented as decimal values separated by periods, as in 123.45.67.89. In order to ensure uniqueness, IP addresses are assigned in part by the Internet Assigned Numbers Authority (IANA). To deal with the rapid growth of the Internet, IP addresses have become hierarchical, and the address bits can be given any of several interpretations. The bits in an IP address are allocated for Net and Host (Node in Internet terminology) fields, which specify a network and host number, respectively. Originally, 8 bits were allocated for networks and the remaining 24 bits for the host information. Since there are well over 255 networks now attached to the Internet, such an addressing scheme is no longer adequate. To help handle the growth of the Internet, several classes of addresses have been defined. These differ in how they allocate bits for the Net and Host fields.