Types of IP Address in Computer Network: What is & Full Form (2024)

IP Full Form: The IP address stands for Internet Protocol address is also called IP number or internet address. It helps you to specify the technical format of the addressing and packets scheme. Most networks combine TCP with IP.

Types of IP address

There are mainly four types of IP addresses:

• Public,
• Private,
• Static
• Dynamic.

Among them, public and private addresses are based on their location of the network private, which should be used inside a network while the public IP is used outside of a network.

Let us see all these types of IP address in detail.

Public IP Addresses

A public IP address is an address where one primary address is associated with your whole network. In this type of IP address, each of the connected devices has the same IP address.

This type of public IP address is provided to your router by your ISP.

Private IP Addresses

A private IP address is a unique IP number assigned to every device that connects to your home internet network, which includes devices like computers, tablets, smartphones, which is used in your household.

It also likely includes all types of Bluetooth devices you use, like printers or printers, smart devices like TV, etc. With a rising industry of internet of things (IoT) products, the number of private IP addresses you are likely to have in your own home is growing.

Dynamic IP address

Dynamic IP addresses always keep changing. It is temporary and are allocated to a device every time it connects to the web. Dynamic IPs can trace their origin to a collection of IP addresses that are shared across many computers.

Dynamic IP addresses are another important type of internet protocol addresses. It is active for a specific amount of time; after that, it will expire.

Static IP Addresses

A static IP address is an IP address that cannot be changed. In contrast, a dynamic IP address will be assigned by a Dynamic Host Configuration Protocol (DHCP) server, which is subject to change. Static IP address never changes, but it can be altered as part of routine network administration.

Static IP addresses are consistent, which is assigned once, that stays the same over the years. This type of IP also helps you procure a lot of information about a device.

Types of Website IP Addresses

Two types of website IP Addresses are 1) Share IP Address 2) Dedicated IP Address

Shared IP Addresses

Shared IP address is used by small business websites that do not yet get many visitors or have many files or pages on their site. The IP address is not unique and it is shared with other websites.

Dedicated IP Addresses:

Dedicated IP address is assigned uniquely to each website. Dedicated IP addresses helps you avoid any potential backlists because of bad behavior from others on your server. The dedicated IP address also gives you the option of pulling up your website using the IP address alone, instead of your domain name. It also helps you to access your website when you are waiting on a domain transfer.

Version of IP address

Two types of IP addresses are 1)IPV4 and 2) IPV6.

IPV4

IPv4 was the first version of IP. It was deployed for production in the ARPANET in 1983. Today it is the most widely used IP version. It is used to identify devices on a network using an addressing system.

The IPv4 uses a 32-bit address scheme allowing to store 2^32 addresses, which is more than 4 billion addresses. To date, it is considered the primary Internet Protocol and carries 94% of Internet traffic.

IPV6

It is the most recent version of the Internet Protocol. Internet Engineer Taskforce initiated it in early 1994. The design and development of that suite is now called IPv6.

This new IP address version is being deployed to fulfill the need for more Internet addresses. It was aimed to resolve issues which are associated with IPv4. With 128-bit address space, it allows 340 undecillion unique address space.

IP Address Classification Based on Operational Characteristics

Unicast addressing

Unicast addressing is the most common concept of an IP address in the Unicast addressing method. It is available in both IPv4 and IPv6.

This IP address method refers to a single sender/receiver. It can be used for both sending and receiving the data.

In most cases, a Unicast address is associated with a single device or host, but a device or host that may have more than one unicast address.

Broadcast addressing

Broadcasting addressing is another addressing method available in IPv4. It allows you to manage data to all destinations on a network with a single transmission operation.

The IP address 255.255.255.255 is mostly used for network broadcast. Moreover, limited directed-broadcast uses the all-ones host address with the network prefix.

IPv6 does not provide any implementation and any broadcast addressing. It replaces it with multicast to the specially defined all-nodes of the multicast address.

Multicast IP addresses

Multicast IP addresses are used mainly for one-to-many communication. Multicast messages are mostly sent to the IP multicast group address.

In this, routers forward copies of the packet out to every interface with hosts subscribed to that specific group address. Only the hosts that require receiving the message will process the packets. All other hosts on that LAN will discard them.

Anycast addressing

In anycast addressing the data, the stream is not transmitted to all receivers. However, just the one that the router decides is closest to the network.

This IP addressing comes as a built-in feature of IPv6. In IPv4, it is implemented by using the Border Gateway Protocol by using the shortest-path metric. This method is widely used for global load balancing and is also used in distributed DNS systems.

Summary