Q) What is IP??
Ans: IP stands for Internet Protocol. It is a unique address assigned to a computer when it connects to the internet.
Q) Who has an IP address??
Ans: Any computer that is either connected to Internet or is connected to a network.
Internet Protocol :
- Well, today we all own a smart phone which has an inbuilt GPS or tracker, or apps that track your phone if it is lost. The question is how do these apps track down your place? They do it using your current longitude and latitude!
- Similarly, on the Internet, the apps are the server to whom you requests webpages, and the longitude and latitude are your IP address and MAC address. We will just be talking about IP here not MAC.
- IP address is a unique address given to every computer that is connected to the internet. If you’re online and you can use Facebook or check mails or just surf various sites, it is because you own a unique IP address, which is only given to you and not any other computer on Internet.
- IP address helps your Computer to communicate with other Computers on same network and on internet.
You can also find your own public IP address through which you’re connected to the internet.
If you want to check your private IP address i.e. the IP you will use to communicate inside a network, go to Start and type cmd and type ‘ipconfig‘ without quotes.
The basic format of any IP address is
xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx where 0<x<255 or x ranges from 0-255.
Now that we have an idea about what IP is lets look at two type of IP’s
1. Static IP.
2. Dynamic IP.
1. Static IP :
- Static IP is the IP address that never changes.
- You will connect to the internet using the same IP address everyday until your ISP changes your IP address.
- Suppose your Internet Service Provider gave you a static IP of 182.148.176.96. So until and unless you change your service provider, each time you connect to the internet you will have this address, and this address is RESERVED for you and you only.
- No other computer would connect to Internet using this IP except you.
- In static, you would have to to give the IP, subnet mask, gateway and the IP of DNS server manually.
2. Dynamic IP :
- Dynamic IP is the IP address that changes every time you connect to the internet.
- Today you might have 182.148.200.34 and tomorrow you would have 182.148.5.150. Dynamic IP is given by a DHCP (Dynamic Host Control Protocol) server of your Service Provider, and the Service Provider do keep logs, of which IP was assigned to which computer on which day.
- In case of Dynamic IP, your service provider buys a range of IP’s to give to their clients.
- Suppose an ISP took IP addresses ranging from 182.148.0.0 to 182.148.100.100. If any of the clients tries to connect to the internet, the DHCP server would assign the computer any free IP from that pool of IP addresses.
- This is why the IP is continuously changing each time you connect to the internet. In this case, the DHCP server will assign the IP address and DNS server’s address by itself.
Well lets see how you actually get a webpage on internet.
Process of getting a webpage from internet using IP!
The above figure is just an overview of how you get a webpage. The real process is far more complicated than this.
There is a DNS server in internet which translates ‘google.com’ entered in your browser, to an IP of Google and then the browser requests the page to this IP. As I have mentioned earlier, all the communications i.e request and response on internet are done via IP address.
NOTE:
In a network with few computers static IP can be used. But if you have a network consisting of anything above 20-30 computers, it would be a tiresome process to manually go and assign IP to each machine.
Generally in large networks, the Network Administrator would install and configure a DHCP server to assign IP’s to all those computers present in the Network.
Check whether you’re using Static IP or Dynamic IP, by going in
For DIAL UP :-
Control Panel –> Network and Sharing Center –> Change Adapter settings –>Select your dial-up –> Right Click –> Properties –> Configure –>Networking –> Internet Protocol Version 4 (TCP/IPv4)
For Wireless Devices :-
Control Panel –> Network and Sharing Center –> Change Adapter settings –>Select your Wireless Device –>Right Click –> Properties –> Select Internet Protocol Version 4 (TCP/IPv4).