IP Address
Tags: beginners, networking, security, network
Published: 2023-11-27 07:43:07

Well here comes the major question in the entire IT industry , What is an IP Address and why do we need IP address , Who uses IP Address and much more..

Here I am who has done some R&D in this question and found something for you guys , So watch closely (read carefully)!!

##Introduction##

First this post is only gonna give an idea of what is IP address and how it works in real world so there is no theory part (definitions) and no indepth content to become the next network engineer the world has never seen. This post contains just info that every people need to know as IT employee or CS Student or who are all interested in this field

##Lets Get Started##

IP Address are assigned to your devices like lap , pc , mobile by your router.There were two types IPv4 and IPv6

**IPv4 Address** 
- Uses 32 bits addressing scheme so it has over 4 billion combinations which was not enough since we had more population than it (LOL :))
- IPv4 addresses are typically expressed in dotted-decimal format (e.g., 192.168.0.1)

**IPv6 Address**
- Uses 128 bits which had more combinations than IPv4
- IPv6 addresses are typically expressed as eight groups of four hexadecimal digits, separated by colons (e.g., 2001:0db8:85a3:0000:0000:8a2e:0370:7334).

Among these we had separate types of IP address based on their usage

- Public IP
- Private IP
- Static IP
- Dynamic IP

And you may find much types in different sites. And these are 4 types based on day to day usage

**Private IP**

- Lets start with private IP , then it will be easy for you to understand public IP after this.
- This IP is provided by the DHCP in the router which has a few set of IP addresses in the pool (kind of storage) which will be assigned to your devices like laptop ,mobile,printer.
- Using this private IP , they communicate with each other under same network if you wanna print a image from your mobile or lap just give print and if your printer is connected it just prints out right. This is because they are connected using their private IP address
- All sharing data from PC to mobile applications works using the private IP's , Thats why it says to connect under same wifi network 

![](https://dev-to-uploads.s3.amazonaws.com/uploads/articles/g8x2w8869gg0xxza3gau.jpg)

**Public IP**

- This address is given to the router by the ISP provider , so when you are using your laptop to search a youtube video which is in internet
- When your laptop sends a request to the internet , the router uses a mechanism called Network Address Translation (NAT) to map your laptop's private IP address to the public IP address of the router.
- So the internet ( outside your home network ) only knows your public address so when response gets back to the public IP ( which is router ) , the router has the mapping who asked youtube video and it finds with your private IP so okay this device asked so it sends back the response to your laptop

![](https://dev-to-uploads.s3.amazonaws.com/uploads/articles/6rxernrp5ubkfusf4hj6.jpg)

**Static IP**

- From name we can identify that it never changes unless intentionally changed
- For eg : Public IP which is assigned by your ISP to your router will never change unless you contact your ISP to change it for you , Even in some organization using LAN network when you connect and disconnect you always have same IP which means they configured that LAN to have static IP

**Dynamic IP**

- Same as saw earlier in static , this one changes each time you connect to the network  try it with your home network and you might see different IP address each time you connect to the internet 
- So how this works , As i said earlier there will be range of ip address available for router(DHCP) to assign so initially you connected to an IP (192.168.25.1) and disconnected , so that IP returns to available state in DHCP's pool and when you reconnect there might be few other available IP addresses too
- So the router asks DHCP for available IP address and it picks the available address from the pool and sends back to router and from router to your device 

**And there raises a question , When i disconnect my older IP will it also be available in pool so is there a chance to get old IP itself ?**
Ans : Yes , DHCP follows a lease functionality so when you disconnect and reconnect if the lease of that IP is not expired then it connects to the same device . And if the lease is expired and if it is not assigned to any other device and you may get the same IP based on just luck , There is no assurance here.

##Conclusion##

In simple words , IP addresses are names assigned to your devices. Lets end with a real world example , In your home you will be called by your nickname among your family and you communicate with each other using that But when you go outside of your home , your nickname doesn't work there so thats where your realname comes in play. And when you receive a courier to your home , The guy asks for your real name and your family understands that and gets you the package.
Now nickname - Private IP and Realname - Public IP , it strikes now right


![Peace](https://dev-to-uploads.s3.amazonaws.com/uploads/articles/w5901tplafh1uxk8oov1.gif)

And See you in next one :) and Be Nice in the comments and If you have any suggestions say it here