What Do All The Numbers Mean? Exploring The IP Address And Find Out How It All Comes Together.

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It's like this, every server on the internet is assigned a unique number known as an IP (Internet Protocol) address. This number can be thought of as a unique 'telephone number' which allows other computers to find and access files no matter where they are. The IP address is 4 bytes (32 bits). Each byte is known as an octet and can have a value between 0 and 255. So an example of an IP address would be 218.208.157.8.

IP addresses of 32 bits theoretically allow for more than 4 billion unique addresses, but in practice the actual number is much less. This is because certain ranges are reserved for special purposes so the number of available IP addresses is limited. Web sites can get around this limitation by using shared hosting or virtual servers. Rather than using one server for one web site, shared hosting allows several hundred sites to be hosted on the same server. Now each of these sites will have the same IP address. In cases like these, the sites can be uniquely identified by their domain name instead.

Shared hosting solves the problem of limited IP addresses for web sites. However there is also a need for IP addresses for each personal computer connected to the Internet. Rather than assigning a unique IP Address to each PC, internet providers can use a system of 'dynamic addresses'. This means that each time you connect to the Internet through a dial-up or DSL modem you are assigned a different IP address.

Recently people have found ways to host their websites on their own computers instead of on the Internet. Now in order to do this, you cannot be using a dynamic IP address. This is because if your IP is always changing then no one will be able to find your site. There are of course services that allow you to assign a domain name to a site with a dynamic IP address. What happens with this is that each time you are assigned a new IP, your computer will automatically notify the service which will in turn update it's domain name server.

As you can see, hosting a web site from your own computer is doable and you can even get past the problem of dynamic IP addresses. However it may not be the best idea to do so because doing so might take a toll on your computer. Firstly it has to be able to operate server software, and you will be required to have a high speed Internet connection. Now even with the high speed connection, you won't be able to match the speed of web hosting companies. Thus your pages will probably load slower. So the idea of hosting a web site on a computer may only be feasible if you have a very small personal site with only a few visitors.

 

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