Basic Networking: The IP Address

So what’s this IP address thing that you sometimes here the techy’s talking about.

For the purpose of this tutorial we will look at IP Addresses using IP Version 4 as this is currently the most widely used and IP Version 6 is still not widely used.

An IP address is basically a set of unique numbers that electronic devices use to identify and communicate with each other on a network such as the internet or a local network like you would see in an office environment.

The concept is very similar to the house where you live having an address, ie your name might be Mr Jones and your address 99 Main Street, Denver, Colorado USA. Therefore if I was to send a letter by post to you I would need to fill out the full details as below.

Mr Jones
99 Main Street
Denver, Colorado
USA

In Networking the IP addresses look like this sample below,

192.168.1.1 or 203.12.160.35

Some IP addresses are meant to be unique on the Global Internet, while others only need to be unique within your local Network.

So for every device that is directly connected to the internet it will need a unique address that sets it apart from every other device on the internet.

Examples of these devices are your broadband router or modem that connects you to the internet, Internet web servers such as www.google.com etc.

So what about if you have a broadband modem at home and you have one or two or more computers connected to this modem and they all access the Internet.

Well what happens in this situation is, the modem gets a unique IP address for the internet and any of the computers that connect to that modem and then access the internet will get there own address that is only unique for your local little network at home. Any of the computers that use the internet will use the address of the modem to access the internet.

Please see how this works in the picture below.

Picture: The Wizard

Please note this is a part of the basic networking series, we will soon be beginning a more advanced networking series for those of you interested. Stay tuned!