Whatever tasks you perform online, whether it is emails, video calls, shopping, payments, or simply browsing, it is your device’s IP address that makes it possible. IP addresses provide a way of identifying and locating devices on a network, making information exchange among them possible.

This blog post explores the basics of IP addresses, what they are, how they work, their types, and most importantly IP address security. Whether you are new to networking or just want to brush up on your knowledge, this post provides a crisp overview of IP addresses.

An IP address, or Internet Protocol address, is a series of numbers that uniquely identifies a connection of a device with a network. Every device connected to the internet has an IP address. This makes it possible to see which devices on the network are sending, requesting, and receiving information, facilitating communication with each other over the same network as well as other networks such as the Internet.

IP addresses are expressed as a set of four numbers that are divided into two parts - the network ID and a host ID. Each set of numbers separated by a decimal in an IP address is called an octet. The first three sets of octets comprise the network ID indicating which network the device is on, while the fourth octet indicates the host ID, i.e. the specific device on that network.

So, if 192.168.1.3 is your local IP address, 192.168.1 is your network ID and 3 is your host ID. According to network best practices, the network router has host ID 1 and subsequent devices get assigned 2,3,4, and so on. IP addresses can range from 0.0.0.0 to 255.255.255.255, i.e. each set of numbers between the periods can range from 0 to 255 (on a 255.255.255.0 network, there will be 254 usable hosts as 255 is usually the broadcast address and not used as a host).

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