adminWhat Are IP Addresses
Just as your home has a street address, every computer, smartphone and IoT device you own has an Internet Protocol (IP) address. In fact, you have hundreds of IP addresses if you connect to the internet at work or when using public WiFi in a coffee shop, airport or hotel. An IP address helps the Internet find devices and determine how to send data to them.
Your computer needs an IP address to communicate with other computers over the Internet and to access websites on the web. Your IP address also acts as your “signature” when you sign up on social media, comment on an online forum or post that killer “monkey in a tutu” meme. And it’s your IP address that cybercriminals use to target you for ransomware, phishing or other attacks.
ip addresses are numbers that identify devices on the internet and are assigned by a network administrator. They may be static (fixed) or dynamic (change on a regular basis). The older version of IP, called IPv4, has a limited pool of about four billion unique addresses. But the designers of the internet backbone technologies created a newer version, called IPv6, which has a much larger pool of trillions of unique addresses.
What Are IP Addresses and Why Are They Important?
In order to understand how your IP address works, it’s helpful to think about how the Internet used to work in the prehistoric days of ARPANET — the grandfather of the modern Internet. ARPANET was the first ever network of interconnected computers, and its early days saw a lot of experimentation with how to make them talk to one another.
The result was a series of rules that eventually became the TCP/IP protocol system — the global language that allows computers on different networks to connect to and talk to each other. This system is the backbone of today’s Internet and all other global communication systems.
The heart of the TCP/IP protocol is the IP address, a string of numbers that uniquely identifies each network device on the internet, including computers, routers, servers and even websites. These IP addresses are masked by domain URLs, making them easier to remember. Just like your Grandma Betty has her own home address, the Internet uses these addresses to pinpoint where to deliver your emails, data and those killer monkey in a tutu memes. Without them, the Internet would just scream into the void and no one would hear it.
