IP addressing is a hierarchical system that enables data to be routed accurately across global networks by organizing addresses into manageable, delegated ranges. Unlike MAC addresses, which are fixed and only practical on local networks, IP addresses can be dynamically assigned and logically structured to support worldwide communication.
IP Addressing
It is wild how we can send messages across this planet in milliseconds with a touch of a button - how I can type something out and hit enter and it just gets to where it needs to go. But there's addressing involved with that. Specifically, there's IP addressing. That IP addressing lets that information know how to get to where it's destined to.
When we're communicating on a local area network, what we're going to be using is these MAC addresses. So to address devices on the network, we're going to send it to a MAC address. Now, what's interesting about these MAC addresses is they're burned in on the machine. So whoever manufactured this machine, or specifically the NIC on the machine, assigned it some sort of MAC address. And the next sequence in this MAC address, which would end in the 85, probably got sent to another location, someplace far away maybe.
And so these burned-in addresses have a big weakness. How would you find a specific MAC address in the world? We would have to have a huge database on all the locations of all the computers. Not to mention, there's a security risk with that. But we would have to just have a crazy database that's simply not manageable if we were to use these MAC addresses as a form of routing information, of sending information across this planet. It's just not feasible. MAC addresses only really work on a local scale, a local level.
Instead, we need some sort of hierarchy addressing. That's what IP addresses give us. We could represent all of IPv4 addresses using this address right here, and then we could split it down into smaller components. So you can see an 8, a 9, a 10, 11, 12, 13. We could take a block of those and we can assign it to some sort of country or some sort of area. And then from there, all we need to do is if there's something within this range, we just send it to that area, and then they figure out what to do with it from there. Then it's out of our hands and they have to figure it out.
And then in that area they further break this down. Let's take this 10 network right here - it can be broken down into, we see 97, 98, 99, 100, 101. So this address gets broken down into all of here. So whatever gets sent could be sent to here, which then could be sent to here. And then this could be further broken down into smaller networks. We can see 97, 98, 99. This is all for the third octet now. So we see that this is all broken down, and it could be sent then to wherever it's going to be next, and so on and so forth.
So the point here is that IP addresses are a hierarchy address, and hierarchy addresses allow us to have kind of these scopes that we divvy out to certain entities. Whether it be - there are some entities out there that we give it to, and they would give it to internet service providers, and they give it to businesses, and then the businesses would divvy it out amongst their network. And we'd still be able to route traffic all across this planet because it's a hierarchy addressing scheme.
So what does an IP address look like? Well, it's 32 bits long. So this is what it looks like to the computer, in computer language. But when we want to read it, it gets broken down into a little different visual for us so that we can read it. It's in decimal format, so we see more familiar numbers: 192.168.40.41. And then it's broken up into these octets, so we break it up with these dots here. So we read this 192.168.40.41.
Now, as we see with the MAC addresses, they're really quite random as to which ones we have on our network, because we probably bought these machines maybe from different vendors, probably from different times, and so we get different ranges of these MAC addresses. However, what happens is when a machine connects to this network, then it gets an IP address. And so usually we have dynamic configuration for these, and so it will get an IP address when it connects to the network. If you were to take that laptop and move it and connect it into a different network, then it would get assigned a different IP address in a different range. And that once again is so that way any packet in the whole world, any message in the whole world destined for this device, can get there with this assignable IP address.
Of course, if we have some sort of hierarchy addressing, we also have entities that are responsible for certain sections of that. So we've got IANA, that's responsible for the big overall, that divvies out amongst these different areas, and these are who is in control of those different areas. So we divvy out who's responsible for these different areas and assigning IP addresses, and then these entities are responsible for divvying out whatever ranges they were given into smaller ranges within their area.
So when it comes to an IP address, in this example it's 48.51.46.55. Maybe I'm sending a message to this. It can get sent to the right place. And I don't know which area this one actually goes to, but it'll send it to the right area, which will then send it into the right area as part of that area, and narrow it down to wherever it needs to go.
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