Why are IP addresses divided into five parts?
Why are IP addresses divided into five parts?
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ASKED:
December 10, 2009 8:57 PM
UPDATED:
December 11, 2009 2:34 PM
Answer Wiki:
They aren't. IP Addresses are divided into four parts called octets (192.168.0.1 as an example). Each number between the periods is an octet. These numbers are just a human readable version, the IP address and subnet are actually binary numbers. They are broken into the octets as each 8 bit character is an octet.
by the way there are class A,B,C,D class of ips
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An octet is 8 bits. Since there are 4 octets in an IP address, this means an ip address is actually 32 bits. An IP address may actually be displayed in various formats including the format shown above with 4 decimal numbers. It may be displayed as 0′s and 1′s or as a single base10 number. The subnet mask is usually displayed as either 4 decimal dotted numbers or as “/#” where the # represents the number of bits in the subnet mask between 0 and 32. Subnet masks are generally numbers like: 255.0.0.0 or /8; 255.255.0.0 or /16; 255.255.255.0 or /24. Other subnet masks are frequently used also.
The first octet (in this case 192) denotes the network address. There are only 255 possible entries in this field. WAY back when the internet first got started, that space got divided up among a bunch of large corporations mostly, AT&T, IBM, etc. So that field can tell you who owns that IP space. In the case of 192, that’s actually reserved space. That space is reserved for private addressing. You use that space with your home router, most people are using a 192.168 address at home, you can also use 172.x.x.x or 10.x.x.x depending on the situation. The next octet would generally denote your ISP, the 3rd would denote the “subnet” portion or the sub network that your ISP has assigned you to, usually that’s based upon your geographical location, like they’ll have everyone in the x.x.68.x address space live on maple street and x.x.69.x live on pine street, etc. The last octet is assigned to you via your DSL or cable modem. You give your ISP the MAC address from the back of the modem and they assign it to an address with a specific number at the end, you don’t share this number with anyone else, or it causes conflicts. That’s why we need private addresses at home, your router takes that private address and routes the traffic out through your public address, then takes incoming traffic and sends it to the appropriate device in the house via the private address. It’s actually a lot more complicated than this, I tried to make it as easy to understand as possible. Think of it this way: State.City.Street.House# that’s the easiest way to think of it. Two types of ip addresses are available 1. Private ip and 2. Public ip . If you want to know your public ip use http://www.ip-details.com/ .