Misplaced Pages

This is an old revision of this page, as edited by 71.194.74.121 (talk) at 22:38, 22 November 2006 (→IP versions). The present address (URL) is a permanent link to this revision, which may differ significantly from the current revision.

An IP address (Internet Protocol address) is a unique address that devices use in order to identify and communicate with each other on a computer network utilizing the Internet Protocol standard (IP). In more simple terms, a computer address. Any participating network device — including routers, computers, time-servers, printers, Internet fax machines, and some telephones — can have their own unique address.

An IP address can also be thought of as the equivalent of a street address or a phone number (compare: VoIP) for a computer or other network device on the Internet. Just as each street address and phone number uniquely identifies a building or telephone, an IP address can uniquely identify a specific computer or other network device on a network.

An IP address can appear to be shared by multiple client devices either because they are part of a shared hosting web server environment or because a proxy server (e.g. an ISP or anonymizer service) acts as an intermediary agent on behalf of its customers, in which case the real originating IP addresses might be hidden from the server receiving a request. The analogy to telephone systems would be the use of predial numbers (proxy) and extensions (shared).

IP addresses are managed and created by the Internet Assigned Numbers Authority. IANA generally assigns super-blocks to Regional Internet Registries, who in turn allocate smaller blocks to Internet Service Providers and enterprises.

IP header size is 20 bytes.

An IP address is.......

We dont know.

See also

• Ping
• 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
• Geolocation
• Geolocation software
• Geo (marketing)
• Honeypot
• Data mining
• IP address spoofing
• Private network

External links

• Template:Dmoz
• Articles on CircleID about IP addressing
• IP Lookup IP Lookup & IP Whois Whois.
• IP-Address Management on LANs — article in Byte magazine
• Introduction to IP Address Allocation
• Understanding IP Addressing: Everything You Ever Wanted To Know

RFCs

• IPv4 addresses: RFC 791, RFC 1519, RFC 1918
• IPv6 addresses: RFC 4291

• Network addressing
• Internet architecture