What is an IP Address?
IP Address or Internet Protocol Address is the way to unique number to locate where you have connected on the internet.
An IP Address or Internet Protocol Address is the numerical representation of where you are connected in the network. It is essential to have some understand of what an IP address is if you are roaming around the internet. This will give you better aware of how internet works and access to different contents.
Easiest way to put it in your mind is just think IP Address as a normal address. IP Address has two parts. The IP and the port just like a normal address which has a street name/number and house number.
We can compare the street number to the IP and house number to the port. That means, as your house is the house number is in the particular street address, your IP address is the port number in the particular IP address. To keep it simple, we use only IP part of IP address usually. You can find your IP from My IP.
“One of the things that is no so good is that a decision was made long ago about the size of an IP address – 32 bits. At the time, it was a number much larger than anyone could imagine ever having that many computers but it turned out to be a small one.”
– Jon Postel
Currently, there are two types of IP addresses, IPv4 and IPv6. IPv4 addresses are 32 bit long which provides up to 232 distinctive addresses. IPv6 address are 128 bit long address which provides up to 2128 distinctive addresses. However, still the widely used one is IPv4. IPv6 slowly gaining it market share.