What is an IP Address?

Every computer and device on the Internet has a numerical Internet Protocol address (IP address) that uniquely identifies it on the network. Internet routers use the IP Address to send data from source to destination.

There are 2 types of IP Addresses, IPv4 used currently around the world and IPv6 which currently has limited adoption and is being deployed now due to the limitations in IPv4.

What are IPv4 addresses?

Internet Protocol version 4 (IPv4) addresses are 32-bit (four-byte) numbers that are generally represented as 4 dot-separated numbers such as 192.168.11.121. Each dot-separated number can be from 0 to 255. There are up to 4,294,967,296 (2^32 or over 4 billion) unique IPv4 addresses, although some are reserved for special uses. With the rapid expansion of devices on the Internet, more IPv4 addresses have been needed, so techniques such as network address translation (NAT) have been used to extend the limited addresses available. The transition to IPv6 is expected to effectively remove the addressing limitations of IPv4.

What is IPv6?

Internet Protocol version 6 (IPv6) is a version of the Internet Protocol with a significantly larger address space intended to replace IPv4. IPv6 uses 128-bit addresses (2^128 or approximately 340 undecillion) addresses. This expansion allows for many more devices and users on the internet as well as extra flexibility in allocating addresses and efficiency for routing traffic. IPv6 addresses are represented as 8 groups of 16-bit hexadecimal values separated by colons (:) such as fe80:0000:0000:0000:0202:b3ff:fe1e:8329, with zero values shortened or eliminated as fe80:0:0:0:202:b3ff:fe1e:8329 or fe80::202:b3ff:fe1e:8329.

What is DNS?

The Domain Name System (DNS) is a naming system for computers on the Internet. It is the system that maps human-friendly names such as inetclue.com to computer-friendly IP addresses such as 64.157.141.111. There are numerous types of DNS records such as A records that map domain names to IPv4 addresses and AAAA records that map to IPv6 addresses.

What is a Domain Name?

A Domain Name identifies computers and services on the Internet in a dot-separated heirarchical fashion. The right-most label in a name conveys the top-level domain, so "com" is the top-level domain for the www.inetclue.com name and www is a subdomain of inetclue.com. Domain names must be composed of letters (case-insensitive, so inetclue.com is the same as INETCLUE.COM), digits and hyphens. Additionally, each label may not begin or end with a hyphen, may contain up to 63 characters and the full domain name may not exceed 253 characters.

How do I get a Domain Name?

There are numerous domain name registrars that register domains for you for various prices per year. The first step is to check to see if the name is available using the WhoIs service. Be creative - many short and obvious domain names have already been registered. Once you find an available domain, register it at GoDaddy or another registrar. Once the domain is registered, you will need to get web and email hosting, also available from many companies, including GoDaddy.