Every computer on the Internet is identified by a unique address called Internet Protocol ( IP ) address. This unique address is used to route packets across the Internet. Internet routing protocol uses this unique information to route packets to your computer just like the mailing addresses used in postal system.
An IPV4 address consist of 4 bytes (32 bits) of information and each byte is a number between 0 and 255. IPV4 address is expressed as four decimal numbers with dots act as separator between each one.
Example
| Decimal | 192.168.0.1 |
| Binary | 1000000 10101000 0000000 00000001 |
IPV4 address space is divided in to 5 classes - Class A,B,C,D,E. This division is based on the left most four bits of an IP address, when it's expressed as a binary number.
| Class | Leftmost bits | Start address | End address |
|---|---|---|---|
| A | 0xxx | 0.0.0.0 | 127.255.255.255 |
| B | 10xx | 128.0.0.0 | 191.255.255.255 |
| C | 110x | 192.0.0.0 | 223.255.255.255 |
| D | 1110 | 224.0.0.0 | 239.255.255.255 |
| E | 1111 | 240.0.0.0 | 255.255.255.255 |
If you want to disguise your IP address you can use an anonymizer. I will disguess about anonymizer in my next article.
tags:ip address, format of an ip address, ipv4 address, ip address fields, various classes of ip address, what is ipv4 address, anonymizer, division of ipv4 address
