When you run the command ipconfig on Windows’ Command Prompt, it will list down all the network adapters found on your Windows system. Because IANA (Internet Assigned Number Authority) assigns a unique range of addresses across different countries. Since addresses are unique across the Internet, it also determines the location of the devices from where it is connecting to. Whereas external IP addresses are globally accessible on the internet. Additionally, the same internal IP can be used across two different network subnets, so they are not necessarily unique identifiers. Devices with these addresses are not reachable globally and are accessible within the LAN only. Internal IP addresses are for messaging and connectivity within the internal network. IPv6 addresses support a much larger range and are formatted like y:y:y:y:y:y:y:y where each y is a segment that can range between 0 and FFFF in hexadecimal like 2001:0db8:0001:0000:0000:0ab9:C0A8:0102.Īn IP address helps in location addressing of the connected device and for network interface identification.Īlso, we need to remember that each connected device can have two types of IP addresses: The address of each device in an IP subnet (a kind of subset of complete IP range) should always be unique means no two devices on the same subnet can have the same IP address, otherwise, it will cause an IP address conflict.įor IPv4, its format can be 4 octets like x.x.x.x where each octet is 8 bits or 0 to 255 in decimal. One of the most common and popular examples of a network built on IP addresses is World Wide Web and Internet.

An IP (Internal Protocol) address is a unique identifier that identifies a device on the internet-connected to the TCP/IP protocol and enabled communication over it.

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