Written by An IP Address (shortcut for Internet Protocol Address) is like a postal address of a house. It uniquely identifies the house within a street. The IP address, in our case, uniquely identifies a host (usually a computer) which is connected to a network. Usually this network is a Local Area Network (LAN), like the networks we have in our work environment.
An IP-address is a 32-bit binary number(under IPv4 version) or 128-bit binary number if using the IPv6 version). A convenient way for defining IP addresses is a record in the form of four decimal numbers (0 to 255) separated by periods, for example, 192.168.0.1.
An IP address contains two parts: The Network Part and the Host Part. The subnet mask is the element which separates the network and host parts of the IP address. Two nodes belonging in the same network part can communicate directly without a router device. However, if the nodes reside on a different network part, a router (or multiple routers) is required for the hosts to communicate. The trainings offered from Trainsignal do a pretty good job to teach you all about IP addresses and networking in general.
One last concept you need to know is the difference between public and private IP addresses. Public IP addresses are assigned to hosts which need to send traffic on the Internet. Private IP addresses are assigned to computers on a private isolated network, like a LAN.
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