Everyone knows that to send a letter to the right person, you need to provide an exact and detailed address, from country and city to zip code, street and house number. Only in this way can the staff in the post office know where to take the letter.

The same is true on the Internet, where each device needs a unique “house number” to communicate with other devices on the network and exchange data. This “house number” is the IP address. The Internet Protocol (IP) plays an important role in assigning IP addresses to networked devices, either automatically or manually, during the connection period.

Internet Protocol addresses (also known as “IP addresses” or simply “IP”) are the foundation of the Internet. It is based on the Internet protocol, which refers to the uniquely identifiable address of a device in an internal or external network (such as a computer, Web server, or printer, etc.). An IP address can specify an entire group of devices, or multiple addresses can be assigned to a single computer. And each IP address in the network can only be used once at any given time. Let’s talk more about how IP addresses work.

Types of IPv4, IPv6, and IP

There are now two versions of IP addresses, called IPv4 and IPv6.

IPv4 address

Most devices currently primarily use Internet Protocol version 4 (IPv4) addresses. It consists of 32-bit binary numbers, such as 11000000 10101000 10110010 00011111. To make this number easy to distinguish, the 32-bit binary number is usually represented as a combination of four decimal digits with values from 0 to 255, starting with the point.. Space. For example: 192.168.178.31.

In all, IPv4 can comprise about 4.3 billion different addresses. For early global Internet devices, the number of IP addresses was sufficient because all devices were not used at the same time, and some devices were only used in private networks. But now more and more daily devices need to connect to the Internet, especially the emergence of the Internet of Things (IoT) makes a large number of devices need to have their own IP address, the number of IPv4 addresses has been used up, and cannot meet the number of demand.

IPv6 has arrived

IPv6 addresses are 128-bit and therefore must be written as 128-bit binary numbers. Since such a number is too long and impractical, the 128 bits are compressed into 8 blocks of 16 bits using hexadecimal notation, separated by a colon:. For example, 0000:0000:0000:0000: FFFF: C0A8: B21F. The letters A through F are also used as hexadecimal numbers. We can further simplify the format if we omit the zero at the beginning of each block and replace a series of contiguous 0000 blocks with two colons “: :”. The above example can be abbreviated to :: FFFF: C0A8: B21F.

The type of IP address

Apart from the IPv4 and IPv6 differences, IP addresses are divided into dynamic IP addresses, static IP addresses, and “special purpose” IP addresses reserved for private network use.

Dynamic IP address

Dynamic IP addresses are most commonly used for everyday online browsing. When a DSL (Digital Subscriber Line) customer uses its router to access the Internet, the Internet Service Provider (ISP) aslocates a random IP address from the address pool. The assigned IP is either deleted after each use or automatically changed periodically (for example, every 24 hours).

By “reusing” IP addresses in this way, the scarcity of the IPv4 address space is effectively alleviated, as enterprises can configure the IP according to customer requirements without having to worry about buying extra copies.

Static IP address

The static IP address is always the same unless the owner changes it on his own initiative. These IP addresses are often used by Web servers because Web sites must always be accessed at the same address. Static IP is also used in a private network (LAN) to communicate with a local printer or another computer in a home network. From the user’s point of view, the biggest disadvantage of static IP addresses over dynamic addresses is that they are easier to track.

Preserve private IP addresses

IANA (the Internet Assignment of Numbers, which coordinates global IP address allocation) reserves some addresses for private IP address space or other special purposes, reserving about 14.5% of the IPv4 address space. Such as:

  • The IPv4 address space 0.0.0.0 through 0.255.255.255 encapsulated in CIDR address block 0.0.0.0/8 refers to the host of the network.
  • When you enter the IP address 127.0.0.1, you can communicate with the localhost. This is necessary for testing new applications.
  • The IP address 255.255.255.255 is specified for broadcasting.
  • The address Spaces 10.0.0.0-10.255.255.255, 172.16.0.0-172.31.255.255, and 192.168.0.0-192.168.255.255 are reserved for private network use. For IPv6, the prefix fc00 :: / 7 is specified as proprietary.

These IPs are not assigned by the Internet, so they are never routed over the Internet. However, if you want to connect to the Internet, the router uses network address translation (NAT) to translate the private IP address into a valid IPv4 or IPv6 address for your local network. A network administrator can automatically assign a private IP address either manually or through a DHCP server.

How do I find my IP address?

Knowing the type of IP, where can we find our IP address?

Different operating systems use different methods to see the computer’s local IP:

  • For Windows, enter the command “ipconfig” at the command prompt. You can open a command prompt by pressing the [Windows] + [R] key and typing “CMD” in the box that pops up.
  • The local IP of a Mac system can be viewed in the following way: System Settings > Network.
  • Linux system, in the command line input “ifconfig”, you can view the local IP and other information.

IP address and data protection

Although IP addresses themselves contain no information, they are sometimes the subject of debate among data privacy advocates because they can be used as user identifiers. So is the IP address associated with user information?

First, a user can be linked to his or her Internet provider based on his or her IP address. For example, 183.128, 125.112 beginning IP, then the address belongs to Zhejiang Telecom.

In addition, the exact location of the user’s IP can be determined to some extent based on the distance from the next Internet dialing node. In rural areas, only a rough area may be defined. But in urban areas, where a dial-in node can be found almost every few hundred meters, the location is much more precise.

For some website managers, website server IP exposure caused hacker attacks is also a headache. So it’s very important to hide your IP in a reasonable way. There are several ways to hide your IP:

  • Set up a proxy server or configure a firewall.
  • Use the high protection IP service to map the real IP to the high protection IP for hiding.
  • It is also a good idea to use a CDN service to hide your Web server IP.

As a senior cloud service provider, Youpai Cloud also has a complete protection method for website IP. CDN can also speed up website access while protecting IP

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