Changes to intro I changed the intro making it very simple and clear Wow I suppose that I was totally wrong about that one A comparable analogy to an IP address is a telephone number On a telephone network the phone numbers must be unique Generally speaking each location has one phone number that allows anyone to dial that phone directly by using their unique phone number Likewise a computer is assigned a unique IP address which let s any other computer to connect directly to it by using their unique IP address In reality it is possible for a location to have multiple phone numbers perhaps primarily larger businesses and a computer can also be assigned multiple IP addresses which is pretty cool V S A computer s IP address is very much like a telephone number they are both unique and allow communications with local or remote network devices Much like a multi line telephone a network device may have multiple IP addresses assigned to it Consider that a telephone number is persistent rather than transient and the telephone number in conventional telephony to a physical pair of wires The pair of wires may change due to repair or moves to a new location but the telephone number stays the same A DNS name is persistent while an IP address if dynamically assigned can be transient The closer analogy to telephone number is DNS name not IP address The IP address in turn may map on a LAN to a MAC address I think the latter is better suited but what do I know anyhow local or remote network devices makes no sense for telephones Shorter is not clearer Local and long distance call makes no sense What about LAN vs WAN connection Local and long distance calls are an artificial dichotomy created by phone companies so they can charge for larger network usage LAN MAN CAN WAN etc are also an artificial categorization also for administrative purposes Telephone calls between countries between North American area codes between exchanges and between lines in the same exchange are quite different in terms of the hierarchical switching model in use In like manner the concepts of IP address aggreggation supernetting versus subnetting are quite distinct Local or remote phone numbers do not make sense and neither does local or remote network devices in IP addresses The closest is the localhost but that s entirely different Like I said your shorter version is much less clear because you re using incorrect terminology Dear Cburnett I made new and improved changes Thanks First a street address is too complicated Second a phone number is too complicated Third a book index is too complicated What s next My opinion of this is that you really want to dumb down this analogy Each step you change the example to make it simpler but at the same time to the point of using incorrect terminology This is getting really tiring Explaining a technical concept does not require using grunts chest beatings and wall paintings Cburnett I really liked your last edit the concept that is and I made some minor changes that I feel will enable the reader to better understand the basic concept of an IP address via minor syntax changes Great but why do you keep deleting the colloquial usage I removed it because it was not significant why explain what an IP address is not in so many words Although I do agree with your accurate statement about IP being incorrectly used as an abbreviation for IP address it is merely not applicable as an introductory item this is why I clinically deleted it Cburnett I removed the colloquial usage line I see that you might compare extensions of telephone numbers with the local resolving of shared IP address in a shared hosting environment but I have