What is "ip"

The generic IP address is an identification of a device (computer, printer, etc.) on a local or public network. Each computer on the Internet has a unique IP (Internet Protocol), which is the medium in which machines use to communicate on the Internet.

For better use of network equipment addresses by people, domain addresses such as "www.wikipedia.org" are used. Each domain address is converted to an IP address by the DNS (Domain Name System). This conversion process is known as "name resolution".

The IP address, in version 4 of the IP (Ipv4), is a 32-bit number officially written with four octets (Bytes) represented in decimal format as, for example, "192.168.1.3". The first part of the address identifies a specific network on the Internet, the second part identifies a host within that network. We should note that an IP address does not identify an individual machine, but an Internet connection. Thus, a gateway connected to n networks has n different IP addresses, one for each connection.

IP addresses can be used both to refer to networks and to an individual host. By convention, a network address has the host identifier field with all bits equal to 0 (zero). We can also refer to all hosts of a network through a broadcast address, when, by convention, the host identifier field must have all bits equal to 1 (one). An address with all 32 bits equal to 1 is considered a broadcast address for the source host network of the datagram. The address 127.0.0.1 is reserved for testing (loopback) and communication between processes of the same machine. The IP uses three different address classes. The definition of address type address classes is due to the fact that the size of the networks that make up the Internet varies greatly, ranging from local networks of small computers, to public networks interconnecting thousands of hosts.

There is another version of the IP, version 6 (Ipv6) which uses a number of 128 bits. With this you can use 25616 different addresses. The address of a network (not to be confused with IP address) designates a network, and must be composed of its address (whose last Octeto has the value zero) and its network mask (netmask).