IP Address.

                                   What Is IP Address.

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Every machine on a network has a unique identifier. Just as you would address a letter to send in the mail, computers use the unique identifier to send data to specific computers on a network. Most networks today, including all computers on the Internet, use the TCP/IP protocol as the standard for how to communicate on the network. In the TCP/IP protocol, the unique identifier for a computer is called its IP address.
There are two standards for IP addresses: IP Version 4 (IPv4) and IP Version 6 (IPv6). All computers with IP addresses have an IPv4 address, and many are starting to use the new IPv6 address system as well. Here's what these two address types mean:
IPv4 uses 32 binary bits to create a single unique address on the network. An IPv4 address is expressed by four numbers separated by dots. Each number is the decimal (base-10) representation for an eight-digit binary (base-2) number, also called an octet. For example: 216.27.61.137
IPv6 uses 128 binary bits to create a single unique address on the network. An IPv6 address is expressed by eight groups of hexadecimal (base-16) numbers separated by colons, as in 2001:cdba:0000:0000:0000:0000:3257:9652. Groups of numbers that contain all zeros are often omitted to save space, leaving a colon separator to mark the gap (as in 2001:cdba::3257:9652).
At the dawn of IPv4 addressing, the Internet was not the large commercial sensation it is today, and most networks were private and closed off from other networks around the world. When the Internet exploded, having only 32 bits to identify a unique Internet address caused people to panic that we'd run out of IP addresses. Under IPv4, there are 232 possible combinations, which offers just under 4.3 billion unique addresses. IPv6 raised that to a panic-relieving 2128 possible addresses

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                                                            SUBNET MASK.

What is Subnet Mask and how does it work .?



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A subnet mask is a number that defines a range of IP addresses that can be used in a network. (It is not something you wear on your head to keep subnets out.) Subnet masks are used to designate subnetworks, or subnets, which are typically local networks LANs that are connected to the Internet. Systems within the same subnet can communicate directly with each other, while systems on different subnets must communicate through a router. Therefore, subnetworks can be used to partition multiple networks and limit the traffic between them.
A subnet mask hides, or "masks," the network part of a system's IP address and leaves only the host part as the machine identifier. A common subnet mask for a Class C IP address is 255.255.255.0. Each section of the subnet mask can contain a number from 0 to 256, just like an IP address. Therefore, in the example above, the first three sections are full, meaning the IP addresses of computers within the subnet mask must be identical in the first three sections. The last section of each computer's IP address can be anything from 0 to 255. For example, the IP addresses 10.0.1.201 and 10.0.1.202 would be in the same subnet, while 10.0.2.201 would not. Therefore, a subnet mask of 255.255.255.0 allows for close to 256 unique hosts within the network (since not all 256 IP addresses can be used).
If your system is connected to a network, you can typically view the network's subnet mask number in the Network control panel (Windows) or System Preference (Mac OS X). Most home networks use the default subnet mask of 255.255.255.0. However, some office networks may use a different subnet mask such as 255.255.255.128, which can be used to split a network into two subnets. Large networks with several thousand machines may use a subnet mask of 255.255.0.0. This is the default subnet mask used by Class B networks. The largest Class A networks use a default subnet mask of 255.0.0.0.