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IP Address Tutorial

Page 2: Format of IP Address

Actually the concept of IP Address is quite similar to our telephone number. Every telephone number in a district, for example, New York City, has a unique number. The structure of IP Address is also the same.

IP Address consists of four set of binary number with the length of 8 bits. Therefore the total length of IP Address is 32 bits (8 x 4 = 32) as shown in the following diagram:

IP address format

Actually the above binary IP Address is used by computers to communicate with each others.

However, for the convenience of human being to read, memory and writing, we usually used our familiar decimal number system. Therefore the above IP Address is usually written in decimal system as shown below:

216.69.204.148

We will discuss the structure of IP address in next chapter of this tutorial series.

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