What is the IP Address?
Hello, I’m Sourav Khanna and welcome to peace It’s a session on the introduction to ipv4, part one. Today we’re going to be talking about the purpose of IP addressing. And then we’re going to move on to some ipv4 address properties. There’s a whole lot of ground to cover, and we need to do it quickly. So let’s go ahead and begin this session. Of course, we’re going to start with the purpose of IP addressing.
What is the purpose of IP addressing?
When Bob on network a wants to view a webpage hosted on a server on network C, how does Bob’s computer know where to send him? Well, somehow Bob has gotten that server’s IP address, either an ipv4 format or ipv6.
IP addresses are the location of a PC or server or some other network device that identifies it by both its network location and host location within that network. IP addressing provides a logical addressing scheme for our computers so that they can communicate on networks.
Being logical means that the IP address can be changed with minimal fuss at any time. Unlike the MAC address, or the media access control address, which is physically embedded into the device. On the other hand, IP addresses are programmed and are easily changed.
Now that we know the purpose of IP addressing, let’s move on to sum ipv4 address properties.
ipv4 is made up of a 32-bit binary number. That means there are two to the 32nd power, possible address combinations. That gives us 4,294,967,296. Possible address combinations. With all of these possibilities, a process needed to be developed to keep everything neat and tidy. And most of all, finding double the implementation of a subnet mask was the answer. And I’ll get to that subnet mask in just a moment.
Something that you will find useful is learning how to convert from binary to decimal. Now decimal is base two, which means there are only zeros and ones, as opposed to the base 10 that we’re all used to dealing with. If you would like more information on how to convert from decimal to binary or binary to decimal, you can go to that website that’s listed under this heading.
So now let’s talk about the initial properties of ipv4. It is a 32-bit binary number. As I said before, it’s divided into four sets of eight called octets. These are separated by periods or decimals. Each octet is eight bits which equal one byte. We often represent ipv4 addresses in a human-friendly format. That’s called dotted decimal.
How does an IP address look?
Now when we look at this address 192.168.1.9. That is an IP address, but we don’t know which portion is the network or which portion is the host. To be able to resolve this, it requires the use of a mask, which determines or defines which portion in which this mask is called the subnet mask.
And the subnet mask has the same format as the IP address, as in its 32 bits, and it’s represented in dotted-decimal format. So let’s take a look at how an IP address and subnet mask operate together. So we’re going, to begin with, 192.168.1.9 with a subnet mask of 255.255.255.0.
Now, 192.168.1.9 is the IP address. Like I said, in the other portion, the 255.255.255.0 is the subnet mask. And it’s easiest to show how the subnet masks by converting that dotted-decimal back into binary.
So we can do that by deconstructing the IP address. So the first octet would be one, one, followed by six zeros, which equals 192. The second octet is 10101, followed by three zeros, which equals 168. Those third octets are really easy.
It’s seven zeros followed by one. And then we have the fourth octet, which is four zeros, a one, two zeros and a one that equals nine. Now if we deconstruct the subnet mask, what we have is we have three octets that are full of ones and one octet that’s full of zeros that represent 255.255.255.0.
Now if we put the subnet mask under the representation of the IP address, anything that’s not covered by a one in the subnet mask is a part of the host address. Everything that is covered by a one is the network address. So what we have for that IP address is that 192 dot 168 dot one is the network portion of the address.
And the node portion of the address is the nine. And that’s how the IP address and subnet mask work together to define the network and the node.
Now that concludes this session on the introduction to ipv4 part one, we talked about the purpose of IP addressing and then we moved on to some ipv4 address properties.