What do the IP numbers mean?

[Slo Racer]

We have a massive network and of course many online users. And as happens with all good things someone feels the need to abuse the system. I notice that you log IP numbers on this message board. Can someone tell me how the IP numbers are established? What do each of the 4 groups of numbers mean? We are in the process of creating a tracking system and not sure what the IP numbers are telling us.

Thank you

Slo Racer

[markph]

There are 3 classes of IP address A, B and C. The first gives the network the first number and lets it have a large number of machines e.g. 121.xxx.xxx.xxx, the second assigns two of the numbers two the network and lets it use the next two for the machine address - this is class B and is the type you see most often around the place.

eg. 208.56.xxx.xxx.

Then there is class C which takes this a step further etc, but that isn't used too much.

The address is actuall just a 32(?)bit binary number the 4 numbers you see are just decimal representations of each quarter of the binary string, as a result only have a range between 0 and 255.

IP addresses simply refer to a particular location for example the IP address of the deifinitive motorsport resource of the world is 208.56.112.210.

You can check who owns an IP by doing an nslookup on it, and there are also ways of retrieving it automatically for use in logging scripts etc. Many popular scripts will do this for you.

Ps. These are not the same as domain names domain names just point to a particular IP address (well actually they don't but lets not get too complicated ) ).