IP address

By Joe Gardiner Monday, 12th April 2010

An IP (Internet Protocol) address is a numerical value given to locations of devices in a network that uses the internet protocol. An IP address is used to describe a nodes location on a network, and to broadcast use of the internet protocol for communication across the network.

An IP address is a 32bit number consisting of four sets of numbers separated by a period in the range 0 – 255. For example 100.98.87.234 is a valid IP address, as is 0.0.34.10. It is worth noting that IP addresses are stored as binary numbers (one’s and zero’s) and the 0 – 255 number system is used for human readability.

Due to the exponential growth of the internet the number of available IP address is starting to run out, so a new addressing system, IPv6 using 128bit numbers in the address has been developed, for example 2007:0db8:85a3:08d3:1319:8a2e:0370:7334.

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