As you all know, to mail a letter to the right person, you need to provide an accurate and detailed address, which needs to be accurate from the country and city down to the zip code, street and house number. Only in this way can the staff at the post office know where to send the letter.

On the Internet, too, each device needs a unique “house number” to exchange data with other devices on the network. This “house number” is an IP address. IP addresses are automatically or manually assigned to networked devices during device connection establishment. Internet Protocol (IP) plays an important role in the assignment process.

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

IPv4, IPv6, and IP address types

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

IPv4 address

Most devices currently use Internet Protocol Version 4 (IPv4) addresses primarily. It consists of 32-bit binary numbers, such as 11000000 10101000 10110010 00011111. To make this number distinguishable, it is common to represent the 32-bit binary number as a combination of four decimal digits with values ranging from 0 to 255, starting with the dot. Space. For example, 192.168.178.31.

In all, IPv4 can constitute about 4.3 billion different addresses. For the early days of the global Internet, the number of IP addresses was sufficient because all devices would not be used at the same time, and some devices would only be used on private networks. But now more and more everyday devices need to be connected to the Internet, especially with the advent of the Internet of Things (IoT), a large proportion of devices need to have their own IP addresses, and the number of IPv4 addresses has been used up and cannot meet the demand.

IPv6 has arrived

An IPv6 address has 128 bits, so it must be written as a 128-bit binary number. Because such numbers are too long and impractical, the hexadecimal notation is used to compress the 128 bits into 8 blocks of 16 bits, separated by a colon:. Example: 0000:0000:0000:0000: FFFF: C0A8: B21F. The letters A to 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 consecutive 0000 blocks with two colons: :. The above example can be abbreviated to :: FFFF: C0A8: B21F.

Type of the IP address

In addition to IPv4 and IPv6, IP addresses are classified into dynamic IP addresses, static IP addresses, and special purpose IP addresses reserved for private networks.

Dynamic IP address

Dynamic IP addresses are most commonly used for daily online browsing. When DSL (digital subscriber line) customers access the Internet using their routers, the Internet Service provider (ISP) assigns them a random IP address in the address pool. The assigned IP address is deleted after each use or automatically changed periodically (for example, every 24 hours).

By “reusing” IP addresses, the scarcity of IPv4 address space can be effectively alleviated, because enterprises can configure IP addresses according to customer requirements without considering the problem of buying more spare IP addresses.

Static IP address

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

Reserve the private IP address

IANA, the Internet Digital Assigned Corporation (IANA), a body that coordinates the global allocation of IP addresses, reserves 14.5% of the IPv4 address space for private or special purposes. Such as:

  • IPv4 address Spaces 0.0.0.0 to 0.255.255.255 encapsulated in CIDR address block 0.0.0.0/8 refer to the hosts of the network.

  • If you enter the IP address 127.0.0.1, you can communicate with the localhost. This is necessary to test new applications.

  • IP address 255.255.255.255 Is used to broadcast.

  • 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 networks. For IPv6, the prefix fc00 :: / 7 is specified as dedicated.

These IP addresses are not assigned by the Internet, so they are never routed on the Internet. However, if you want to access the Internet, the router translates a dedicated IP address into a valid IPv4 or IPv6 address for the local network through Network Address translation (NAT). Network administrators can assign dedicated IP addresses manually or automatically through the 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 view the computer’s local IP:

  • For Windows, enter the command ipconfig on the command prompt. To open the cli, press [Windows] + [R] and enter CMD in the dialog box that is displayed.

  • You can view the local IP address of the Mac system by performing the following operations: System Settings > Network.

  • In Linux, enter ifconfig on the CLI to view the local IP address.

IP address and data protection

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

First, users can be linked to their corresponding Internet provider based on their IP address. For example, if the IP address starts with 183.128 or 125.112, the IP address belongs to Zhejiang Telecom.

In addition, the exact location of the next Internet dial-in node can be determined to some extent based on the distance between the user IP and the node. In rural areas, only a rough area may be identified. 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 exposed to hacker attack is also a headache. So it’s important to hide your IP in a reasonable way. You can hide your IP address in the following ways:

  • Set up a proxy server or configure a firewall.

  • Use the high defense IP address service to map a real IP address to a high defense IP address for hiding.

  • It’s also a good idea to hide your Web server IP using a CDN service.

As a senior cloud service provider, youpaiyun has a complete protection method for website IP, and CDN can speed up website access while protecting IP

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