What does an IP Address do?

Think of it as a phone number. Every device has to have a number to identify it so that the routers know where to send all those little packets of data. However, there aren't enough for every device out there, just like with real phones, so yo end up with what you can think of as extensions.

The phone number to your business could be 555.555.5555 but then you might be at extension 43, or 74621

With computing, the device which faces the outside world, usually the modem or a router, gets an IP address that anyone on the internet in the world could direct dial. But to reach any machines behind that device, they have to know it is there and what its extension is. This is also an IP address, but it is called a "local IP" and there are 3 specific pools of numbers you can use for these local addresses. The most common group starts with 192.168.xxx.xxx where x can be any number between 0 and 255 (there are some you can't use but don't worry about that). Usually, it is the router connected to your modem which hands out this local address each time the device connects. The first time it might be 192.168.1.43 and the next time it might by 192.168.1.82 (the first 3 groups won't usually change).

So when your computer calls out and says, " I want to talk to Google.com" your router sends out the request, but at the same time a session ID is created which is used by the server you are talking to to tell your router which computer it needs to send it to when it replies.

There is another piece to this puzzle. In order to avoid confusion, every single device has a unique MAC address which can belong to it and only it. This can't be used to talk on the 'net because it would be too difficult to keep track of how to connect to a particular device - how to route the traffic.

So the router which gives you your IP address, basically a router is a traffic cop, it associates the IP address to the MAC address so it know that signals for 192.168.6.4 go to MAC address X and can route it when it arrives. Without that, all the router could do is shout "hey, did someone order a pizza?" and hope the one who placed the order heard the shout amongst all the hub and noise from the surrounding area. As a result, If you connect to site XYC from your computer at home and then connect to XYC from the local coffee shop, even though your IP address has changed, you MAC address is still the same and can identify YOUR specific computer as the source of whatever was done on the connection.

An IP address (Internet Protocol address) is a numerical label assigned to each device (e.g:computer,printer) participating in a computer network that uses the

Internet Protocol for communication.If we want to communicate two or more system we need a ip address.An IP address serves two principal functions host or network interface identification and location addressing. Its role has been characterized as follows: A name indicates what we seek. An address indicates where it is.ip address consists of 4 bytes separated by dots.

Two types of ip addresses we are using:

1)Internal ip address(IP address is assigned by yourself)

2)External ip address(IP address is assigned by an ISP if you have an internet connection)

If you want to check your internal ip address on Windows OS use the following methods:

start->Run->cmd->type ipconfig

If you want to check your External ip address you can visit this site Ip-details.com

Here you can search ip,IP Location,Country,Latitude and Longitude details etc.

IP address is like an Internet driver license plate. It's the code that websites see when you go on their sites. Each one is different and the IP address is projected by the router ( the box which connects to your computer with phone wires.)

Well you can pretty much think of IP address as something like mail, it describes where to send data so that it reaches where it's supposed to be. A warning though, if somebody knows your IP address it can do damage to all the computers that are in that area. Such as shutting it down, or sending viruses directly to them.

What Does Internet Protocol Do

It's basically an address for your computer and can be located .

It takes ten seconds for the Y.A. question to open for me to be able to click on the [add your answer] button. is my laptop slow??