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LibrariesinsideNetworking basics

Updated Mar 2025

IP Address

Different nodes on the same IP network are identified by their IP address. For example, each network interface on the computer on which you are reading this text will have a different IP address, as will every remote interface on the network to which your computer is connected.

There are two IP address formats in common use. Currently the huge majority of remote addresses use the IPv4 format, which is a 32-bit number, but is most often written as four separate octets (8-bit numbers) separated by a dot. For example "192.168.0.32".

The other version of IP addressing which is also widely used is the IPv6external_link format. An IPv6 address is a 128-bit number, represented in 8 groups of 16 bits each. Each group is written as four hexadecimal digits and the groups are separated by colons (:). An example of this representation is 2001:0db8:0000:0000:0000:ff00:0042:8329. For convenience and clarity, the representation of an IPv6 address may be shortened to 2001:db8::ff00:42:8329. See Address representationexternal_link for more detail.

See also Static IP Address, DHCP, and DHCPv6.