What is an IP Address?

Everyone’s talking IP (Internet Protocol) so I tossed it out as a topic to consider, “ Why not have a discussion about IP Addresses, how business continues to change, and how everything requires an IP Address?”


Great idea, Amy. Put a few sentences together and it will all make sense to the general public, right? It really isn’t that simple.

What is an IP Address? An IP Address is a number used to identify all information technology hardware (printers, routers, etc) allowing that hardware to communicate with other hardware on a computer network.

Think of it as houses on a street. Who are the people in your neighborhood? Each house has a separate address and the correct mailing address is required in order for that house to accept mail. In the IP world, the “houses” are the hardware and the “neighborhood” is the network. IP Addresses are either Public (outside of your network) or Private (inside your network).

Now that we’ve established the neighborhood, let’s talk about Dynamic IP Addresses versus Static IP Addresses. A Static IP Address never changes. (This makes sense and works with my house and neighborhood example.)

A Dynamic IP Address, however, could change at any time. This address is merely assigned from a pool of IP addresses allocated by your ISP (Internet Service Provider) or DHCP (Dynamic Host Configuration Protocol) Server. Think of it like we think of zip codes. One of our employees, Steve Dietterle said he remembered getting mail addressed to Steve Dietterle, Herscher Illinois. His postmaster acted as a DNS server to route the mail to him.

Look for future posts where we talk about classes, versions, and the other components that may be linked to your IP Addresses.

Welcome to the neighborhood!

This was Amy Hershman’s last conversation with Bill Taylor and Steve Dietterle.