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An IP address (Internet Protocol address) is a unique number, similar in concept to a telephone number, used by machines (usually computers) to refer to each other when sending information through the Internet. This allows machines passing the information onwards on behalf of the sender to know where to send it next, and for the machine receiving the information to know that it is the intended destination.

An example IP address is 207.142.131.236. Converting a number address to a more human-readable form called a domain address (www.wikipedia.org) is done via the Domain Name System. The process of conversion is known as resolution of the domain name.

More detail

The Internet Protocol (IP) knows each logical host interface by a number, the so-called IP address. On any given network, this number must be unique among all the host interfaces that communicate through this network. Users of the Internet are sometimes given a host name in addition to their numerical IP address by their Internet service provider.

The IP addresses of users browsing the world wide web are used to enable communications with the server of the web site. Also, it is usually in the header of email messages one sends. In fact, for all programs that utilize the TCP/IP protocol, the sender IP address and destination IP address are required in order to establish communications and send data.

Depending on one's Internet connection the IP address can be the same every time one connects (called a static IP address), or different every time one connects, (called a dynamic IP address). In order to use a dynamic IP address, there must exist a server which can provide the address. IP addresses are usually given out through a service called DHCP or the Dynamic Host Configuration Protocol.

Internet addresses are needed not only for unique enumeration of hosted interfaces, but also for routing purposes, therefore a high fraction of them are always unused or reserved.

The unique nature of IP addresses makes it possible in many situations to track which computer - and by extension, which person - has sent a message or engaged in some other activity on the internet. This information has been used by law enforcement authorities to identify criminal suspects. The dynamically-assigned nature of many IP addresses can make this more difficult, however.

IP version 4

Addressing

In version 4 of the Internet protocol (IPv4), the current standard protocol for the Internet, IP addresses consist of 32 bits, which makes for 4,294,967,296 (over 4 billion) unique host interface addresses in theory. In practice, because addresses are allocated in blocks, a large number of unused addresses are unavailable (much like unused phone numbers in a sparsely-populated area code), so that there is some pressure to extend the address range via IP version 6 (see below).

IPv4 addresses are commonly expressed as a dotted quad, four octets (8 bits) separated by periods. The host known as www.wikipedia.org currently has the number 3482223596, written as 207.142.131.236 in base-256: 3482223596 equals 207×256 + 142×256 + 131×256 + 236×256. (Resolving the name "www.wikipedia.org" to its associated number is handled by Domain Name System servers.)

IPv4 addresses were originally divided into two parts: the network and the host. A later change increased that to three parts: the network, the subnetwork, and the host, in that order. However, with the advent of classless inter-domain routing (CIDR), this distinction is no longer meaningful, and the address can have an arbitrary number of levels of hierarchy. (Technically, this was already true any time after the advent of subnets, since a site could elect to have more than one level of subnetting inside a network number.)

See also: Classful network

Assignment

The actual assignment of an address is not arbitrary. An organization, typically an Internet service provider, requests an assignment of a netblock from a registry such as the American Registry for Internet Numbers (ARIN). The network number comprises a range of addresses which the organization is free to allocate as they wish. An organization that has exhausted a significant part of its allocated address space can request another netblock.

For example, ARIN has allocated the addresses 64.78.200.0 through 64.78.207.255 to Verado, Inc. In turn, Verado has allocated the addresses 64.78.205.0 through 64.78.205.15 to Bomis. Bomis, in turn, has assigned the specific address 64.78.205.6 to the host interface that is named www.wikipedia.com.

As of February 2005, some large blocks assigned include:

Class A

Exhaustion

Some private IP address space has been allocated via RFC 1918. This means the addresses are available for any use by anyone and therefore the same RFC 1918 IP addresses can be reused. However they are not routable on the Internet. They are used extensively due to the shortage of registerable addresses. Network address translation (NAT) is required to connect those networks to the Internet.

While a number of measures have been taken to conserve the limited existing IPv4 address space (such as the use of NAT and Private Addressing), the number of 32-bit IP addresses is not sufficient to accommodate the long-term growth of the Internet. For this reason, there is a general consensus that the Internet 128-bit IPv6 addressing scheme will be adopted over the next 5 to 15 years.

See also: IPv4 address exhaustion

IP version 5

What would be considered as IPv5 existed only as an experimental non-IP real time streaming protocol called ST2 described in RFC 1819. This protocol was abandoned in favour of RSVP.

IP version 6

In IPv6, the new (but not yet widely deployed) standard protocol for the Internet, addresses are 128 bits wide, which, even with generous assignment of netblocks, should suffice for the foreseeable future. In theory, there would be exactly 2, or about 3.403 × 10 unique host interface addresses. If the earth were made entirely out of 1 cubic millimetre grains of sand, then you could give a unique address to each grain in 300 million planets the size of the earth. This large address space will be sparsely populated, which makes it possible to again encode more routing information into the addresses themselves.

A version 6 address is written as eight 4-digit (16-bit) hexadecimal numbers separated by colons. One string of zeros per address may be left out, so that 1080::800:0:417A is the same as 1080:0:0:0:0:800:0:417A.

Global unicast IPv6 addresses are constructed as two parts: a 64-bit routing part followed by a 64-bit host identifier.

Netblocks are specified as in the modern alternative for IPv4: network number, followed by a slash, and the number of relevant bits of the network number (in decimal). Example: 12AB::CD30:0:0:0:0/60 includes all addresses starting with 12AB00000000CD3.

IPv6 has many improvements over IPv4 other than just bigger address space, including autorenumbering and mandatory use of IPsec.

Further reading: Internet RFCs including RFC 791, RFC 1519 (IPv4 addresses), and RFC 2373 (IPv6 addresses).

See also

• MAC address
• Regional Internet Registry
  • African Network Information Center
  • American Registry for Internet Numbers
  • RIPE Network Coordination Centre
  • Asia-Pacific Network Information Centre
  • Latin American and Caribbean Internet Addresses Registry
• Subnet address

External links

• GetMyPC.info Shows WAN/LAN IP Address, ISP and other hidden info on your computer by Walter Muncaster (user:0waldo)
• ShowIP.org Simple tool which displays your IP address.
• ForMyIP.com Remote IP Tracker Useful for tracking dynamic IP addresses.
• Official Internet RFC database and Internet RFCs in HTML format
• IP-Lookup.net Works with IPv6 addresses.
• HostIP.info Community GEO IP Address Location project, including a firefox extension to show link locations
• IP2Location.com Commerical provider of IP location info - provides 20 demo lookups per day.
• Gip IP address calculator Convert from binary to IP, subnet calculator, etc. Linux/Unix software, needs download.
• IPAddressGuide.com Free online IP address tool for CIDR, IP to binary, binary to IP, ping and traceroute.

• Computing
• Computer networks
• Information technology
• Internet architecture
• Identifiers