We often hear the term IP, but what is IP?
IP stands for “Internet Protocol”, which is the protocol for interconnecting networks, abbreviated as IP. After understanding IP, let’s talk about what an IP address is.
First, let me ask everyone a question: there are tens of millions to over a billion hosts connected to the Internet worldwide, how do we identify each host?
We can assign different numbers to different hosts, which is the purpose of an IP address.
All hosts connected to the Internet use the TCP/IP communication protocol, and each device and computer (referred to as a host or network node) on the TCP/IP network is identified by a unique IP address.
An IP address is represented by a 32-bit binary value (4B), divided into 4 groups, each group consisting of 8 bits. From the minimum value of 00000000 to the maximum value of 11111111, corresponding to decimal values of 0-255, with groups separated by a period. For example: 192.168.44.68.
So, how can you check your home computer’s IP address?
Now that we know about IP addresses, let’s introduce “domain names”. A domain name is an alias for an IP address. Since IP addresses are not easy to remember, we use characters that are easier to remember and communicate to represent IP addresses, which is the domain name. It is composed of abbreviations of English words that represent certain meanings, such as www.pku.edu.cn, which is the domain name for Peking University. www.gdqy.edu.cn represents the domain name for Guangdong University of Technology. In actual operation, the domain name address is converted to an IP address by a dedicated domain name server, known as a DNS server.
How is a domain name composed? A domain name is composed of the domain names of its various levels and the name assigned to that host. When writing, the top-level domain is placed on the far right, and the various level domain names are separated by a period. For example, www.pku.edu.cn has a top-level domain of cn representing China, a second-level domain of EDU representing the attribute of the organization as educational, a third-level domain of pku representing Peking University, and www representing the host name (alias).
