Abstract
- It is like your house address, it provides the specific information to locate a Host in an Computer Network
Important
Unlike MAC addresses, which are flat and identify individual devices on a local network, IP addresses use a hierarchical addressing scheme.
This hierarchy enables efficient routing of data packets across the vast interconnected networks of the internet, ensuring they reach their intended destinations.
IPv4
- IP Address that consists of 4 Byte
IPv6
- IP Address that consists of 16 Byte
Private IP Address
- IP Address that are for internal networks and aren’t directly routable on the Internet. They are reused across different Computer Network
| Private IP Addresses | |
|---|---|
| IPv4 | There are 3 private IPv4 ranges: - 10.0.0.0 to 10.255.255.255 (10/8 prefix) - 172.16.0.0 to 172.31.255.255 (172.16/12 prefix) - 192.168.0.0 to 192.168.255.255 (192.168/16 prefix) |
| IPv6 | Start with the prefix FD00::/8 |
Public IP Address
- The IP Address Host uses to communicate with other hosts over the Internet
Special IP Address
- IP Address that has special meanings or purposes otherwise just locating a Host on the Computer Network
Unspecified Address
- The Unspecified Address is
0.0.0.0 - Applications listen on address
0.0.0.0, indicates that they are willing to accept incoming network connections from any available Network Interface on the Host - Useful when you want the application to be accessible from multiple interfaces or IP Address
IP Broadcast Address
- The IP Broadcast Address is
255.255.255.255, all data with this address will be sent to all devices on the same Computer Network. The data won’t be forwarded by Network Router - Useful for tasks such as DHCP where a device needs to obtain an IP Address from a DHCP server, and the DHCP server needs to broadcast its availability to all devices on the network
Useful CLI Tool
ipinfo/cli
- IP geolocation and other types of IP data
- Install with
brew install ipinfo-cli
asn
- A more advanced ipinfo/cli without paying any money
- Install with
brew install asn - Refer to the Github Page for a list of features
Caution
It seems like it isn’t working well for IPv6, use ipinfo/cli for IPv6 instead.