What are IP addresses? and what are they used for? If you type in "ipconfig" on your command prompt in Windows, you can see your current IPv4 address of your device. But how does all of this work? Every device on a network has a certain unique address or identifier. This address is used to send data to other computers in a network, and is known as an IP address (Internet Protocol). There are two different standards for IP addresses: IPv4 and IPv6. The IPv6 format is a newer system, and many computers are also starting to use the IPv6 format as well. The main difference between these two standards is that the IPv4 address uses 32 bits to represent a unique address and IPv6 uses 128 bits to represent a unique address on the network. IPv4 Address The IPv4 address is represented by 4 numbers (that are 8 bit binary) so anything between 0.0.0.0 to 255.255.255.255. Although, there are some address that are meant for other purposes in the IP networks. For example, the 0.0.0.0 address represents an unknown target or a default network. 255.255.255.255 address is a broadcast address; it sends a broadcast packet to all of the computers in a particular network. The address 127.0.0.1 is called the loopback address so that the computer knows how to identify itself, regardless of having an IP address. Computer Networking Now that we know more about IP addresses, lets talk about the Networking Basics! Computers were connected to each other to form a network using a cable called Ethernet. Ethernet can transport lots of data. In order to successfully build a good network, people used network hubs. A network hub is where the Ethernet cables from every computer are connected to a device (hub). So, if computer 1 wants to send a message to another computer, it first has to send it to the hub (through the Ethernet cable), and then the hub sends it to all the other connected computers. This way may not be too efficient and may slow things down if 2 or 3 of these computers were sending messages at the same time. To make this efficient, these networks uses switches to send messages to the intended computer. So if Computer 1 wants to send a message only to Computer 4, the switch will be enabled so that the message doesn't unnecessarily reach the other computers in the network, and only Computer 4.
However, if a message needs to be sent to a device in another network, a router will need to be used. A router is essentially a networking device that can transfer data between networks, and it facilitates the exchange of data packets via the Internet. When a data packet comes from a data line (that the router is connected to), the router reads the address of the packet and determines where its destination is. It then directs the packet to the next network to reach the destination.
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