Public IP Address

 

Public IP Address – What Is a Public IP Address?

An IP address is considered public if the IP number is valid and falls outside any of the IP address ranges reserved for private uses by Internet standards group. Public IP addresses are used by servers (including those for Web sites and DNS servers), network routers or any computer connected directly to the Internet via a modem.

Each public IP is assigned to a range or block of addresses. The Internet Assigned Numbers Authority (IANA) controls ownership of these IP ranges and assigns each block to organizations such as Internet Service Providers (ISPs) who in turn allocate individual IP address to customers.

Address Resolution Protocol (ARP) is a protocol for mapping an Internet Protocol address (IP address) to a physical machine address that is recognized in the local network. For example, in IP Version 4, the most common level of IP in use today, an address is 32 bits long.

How ARP Works

When an incoming packet destined for a host machine on a particular local area network arrives at a gateway, the gateway asks the ARP program to find a physical host or MAC address that matches the IP address. The ARP program looks in the ARP cache and, if it finds the address, provides it so that the packet can be converted to the right packet length and format and sent to the machine.

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