Introduction
IP is an acronym for Internet Protocol. It is a collection of rules for communicating between computers, such as sending messages to a friend’s smartphone. Almost any devices and websites around the world use IP including laptops and phones. In this article, I will explain IP Address.
Terms you will understand after reading this article.
- IP
- IP Address
- IPv4 and IPv6
- Global IP Address and Private IP Address
- ISP
- ICANN
- Router
- Dynamic IP Address and Static IP Address
- Domain
What is IP Address?
An IP address is an address for devices and websites that connects to the internet. Every device and website that connects to it has an IP address. An IP address is a unique series of numbers for specifying an address. This address is used when sending data (email, text message and website, etc.) to another device. You can think of an IP address as an address in the real world. There is no duplicated address in the real world. While an IP address works like a real address on the internet, it does not look like a real address at all. An IP address looks like this:
118.83.81.36 (IPv4)
It consists of 4 numbers separated by dots. Each number ranges from 0 to 255 and a leading zero(s) is abbreviated. This type is called IPv4 (Internet Protocol version 4). IPv4 possesses 43 billion IP addresses. You may think that is a lot, however, all of these addresses are now taken (It run out on November 25, 2019). An interesting fact about IPv4 addresses is that Microsoft actually bought 666,624 IPv4 addresses for $7.5 million in 2011. To resolve the scarcity of IP addresses, IPv6 was launched in 2012. The structure of IPv6 is different from IPv4. It looks like this:
2002:DA28:22DD:7C65:0000:E023:149F:931A
Eight groups of four hexadecimal (0-9, A-F) constitute IPv6, which indicates that there are 340 undecillion addresses, approximately 1028 times larger than IPv4. Therefore, IPv6 has been becoming a standard.
Global IP Address and Private IP Address
There are two types of IP Addresses; Global IP Address and Private IP Address.
Global IP Address is an IP address assigned through Internet Service Provider (ISP). Global IP Address is allocated to any devices when connecting to the Internet. ISP is an organization that gives you access to the Internet. However, ISP itself does not manage entire IP addresses. It is the role of Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN). According to ICANN, it is an “international and not-forprofit organization that brings together individuals, industry, non-commercial and government representatives to discuss, debate and develop policies about the technical coordination of the internet’s domain name system”. All IP addresses are managed by ICANN and provided to regional authoritiessuch as RIPE NCC. Then they distribute IP Addresses to ISPs like AT & T and Verizon.
Private IP Address, on the other hand, is an IP address assigned to devices that are connected to the local network (e.g. wi-fi). A machine called a “router” provides wi-fi. It also gives private unique private IP address to each device that is in the local network to identify a certain device (Remember that IP address has to be unique.) There are some advantages of the usage of private IP addresses. One of them is security. A router has a function called a “firewall” that monitors the internet traffic in order to forestall unauthorized access such as cyber-attacks. Therefore, your device is safer when connecting to wi-fi. Another reason is that you can communicate with other devices that are in the local network. For instance, you can cast YouTube to TV from your smartphone only if your phone and your tv are within the same local network.
Try it out!
You can actually experience that different IP addresses are used whether your phone is connected to wi-fi or not. Go to What Is My IP Address with wi-fi on. And turn your wi-fi off and reload the page and you will see that the IP address shown on that page changes.
Dynamic IP Address and Static IP Address
Both Dynamic IP address and Static IP address are parts of Global IP Address. A dynamic IP address is the most common type of IP address because no setup is required. For example, An IP address assigned to your smartphone by ISP is a dynamic IP address. As the name suggests, An IP address changes but the frequency varies between days to sometimes months.
In contrast, A Static IP address never changes IP address. This type is suitable for hosting servers such as File servers, mail servers, and web servers. A Static IP address does require a set-up and you need to be knowledgeable about it, therefore, it is not as common as the dynamic one.
IP Address and Domain
As mentioned in 2.1., websites also have IP addresses but people rarely see a series of random numbers or hexadecimales when browsing the internet. this is because they see these in a different format; domain. A domain looks like this:
A domain is used to point out an IP address as people can easily tell what a website is about through a domain (Visit This site to find out website’s ip address). This is possible thanks to a Domain Name System (DNS). It is a massive database that contains domains and IP addresses so that it can translate domains into IP addresses.
What is next?
Now you understand what IP address is. But to understand how data such as message and email is delivered, you need to know more than IP Address, specifically Transmission Control Protocol (TCP) and IP (Internet Protocol). These terms are often glued together as they are dependent on each other.