What is IP Address ??

Many of you have heard the term IP or IP Address in many places, specially while hacking. So frnzz, in this post, i want to tell you about this important term: IP Address....

As  per WIKIPEDIA, " Internet Protocol address (IP 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." It is a unique 16-digit number (for IPv4) or a 16-digit alphanumeric code (for IPv6) which is unique for every computer connected in internet.        

In the early stages of development of the Internet Protocol, network administrators interpreted an IP address in two parts: network number portion and host number portion. The highest order octet (most significant eight bits) in an address was designated as the network number and the remaining bits were called the rest field or host identifier and were used for host numbering within a network.

But now, IP address has been classified on the basis of classes.The first three bits of the most significant octet of an IP address were defined as the class of the address. Three classes (A, B, and C) were defined for universal unicast addressing. Depending on the class derived, the network identification was based on octet boundary segments of the entire address. Each class used successively additional octets in the network identifier, thus reducing the possible number of hosts in the higher order classes (B and C). The following table gives an overview of this now obsolete system.

Class	Leading bits in address (binary)	Range of first octet (decimal)	Network ID format	Host ID format	Number of networks	Number of addresses per network
A	0	0–127	a	b.c.d	27 = 128	224 = 16777216
B	10	128–191	a.b	c.d	214 = 16384	216 = 65536
C	110	192–223	a.b.c	d	221 = 2097152	28 = 256

Source: Wikipedia