HTTP

Stands for "Hypertext Transfer Protocol." HTTP is the protocol used to transfer data over
the web. It is part of the Internet protocol suite and defines commands and services used
for transmitting webpage data.

HTTP uses a server-client model. A client, for example, may be a home computer, laptop,
or mobile device. The HTTP server is typically a web host running web server software,
such as Apache or IIS. When you access a website, your browser sends a request to the
corresponding web server and it responds with an HTTP status code. If the URL is valid
and the connection is granted, the server will send your browser the webpage and related
files.

Some common HTTP status codes include:

1. 200 - successful request (the webpage exists)
2. 301 - moved permanently (often forwarded to a new URL)
3. 401 - unauthorized request (authorization required)
4. 403 - forbidden (access is not allowed to the page or directory)
5. 500 - internal server error (often caused by an incorrect server configuration)

HTTP also defines commands such as GET and POST, which are used to handle form
submissions on websites. The CONNECT command is used to facilitate a secure
connection that is encrypted using SSL. Encrypted HTTP connections take place over
HTTPS, an extension of HTTP designed for secure data transmissions.

NOTE: URLs that begin with "http://" are accessed over the standard hypertext transfer
protocol and use port 80 by default. URLs that start with "https://" are accessed over a
secure HTTPS connection and often use port 443.

IP
Stands for "Internet Protocol." IP provides a standard set of rules for sending and receiving
data over the Internet. It allows devices running on different platforms to communicate
with each other as long as they are connected to the Internet.

In order for a Internet-connected host to be recognized by other devices, it must have an

IP address. This may be either an IPv4 or IPv6 address, but either way it uniquely defines
a device on the Internet.

The Internet Protocol also provides basic instructions for transferring packets between
devices. However, it does not actually establish the connection or define the ordering of
the packets transmitted. These aspects are handled by the Transmission Control Protocol,
which works in conjunction with the Internet Protocol to transfer data between systems
on the Internet. For this reason, connections between Internet-connected systems are
often called "TCP/IP" connections.

NOTE: IP may also be short for "IP address," as in "What is your IP?" In this case, IP refers
to the unique identifier of a system, not the protocol itself.

TCP
Stands for "Transmission Control Protocol." TCP is a fundamental protocol within the
Internet protocol suite — a collection of standards that allow systems to communicate over
the Internet. It is categorized as a "transport layer" protocol since it creates and maintains
connections between hosts.
TCP compliments the Internet protocol (IP), which defines IP addresses used to identify
systems on the Internet. The Internet protocol provides instructions for transferring data
while the transmission control protocol creates the connection and manages the delivery
of packets from one system to another. The two protocols are commonly grouped together
and referred to as TCP/IP.

When data is sent over a TCP connection, the protocol divides it into individually
numbered packets or "segments." Each packet includes a header that defines the source
and destination and a data section. Since packets can travel over the Internet using
multiple routes, they may arrive at the destination in a different order than they were sent.
The transmission control protocol reorders the packets in the correct sequence on the
receiving end.

TCP also includes error checking, which ensures each packet is delivered as requested.
This is different than UDP, which does not check if each packet was successfully
transmitted. While the built-in error checking means TCP has more overhead and is
therefore slower than UDP, it ensures accurate delivery of data between systems. Therefore
TCP is used for transferring most types of data such as webpages and files over the
Internet. UDP is ideal for media streaming which does not require all packets to be
delivered.

An IP address, or simply an "IP," is a unique address that identifies a device on the Internet
or a local network. It allows a system to be recognized by other systems connected via the
Internet protocol. There are two primary types of IP address formats used today —
IPv4 and IPv6.

IPv4
An IPv4 address consist of four sets of numbers from 0 to 255, separated by three dots.
For example, the IP address of TechTerms.com is 67.43.14.98. This number is used to
identify the TechTerms website on the Internet. When you visit http://techterms.com in
your web browser, the DNS system automatically translates the domain name
"techterms.com" to the IP address "67.43.14.98."

There are three classes of IPv4 address sets that can be registered through the InterNIC.
The smallest is Class C, which consists of 256 IP addresses (e.g. 123.123.123.xxx — where
xxx is 0 to 255). The next largest is Class B, which contains 65,536 IP addresses (e.g.
123.123.xxx.xxx). The largest block is Class A, which contains 16,777,216 IP addresses
(e.g. 123.xxx.xxx.xxx).

The total number of IPv4 addresses ranges from 000.000.000.000 to 255.255.255.255.

Because 256 = 28, there are 28 x 4 or 4,294,967,296 possible IP addresses. While this
may seem like a large number, it is no longer enough to cover all the devices connected to
the Internet around the world. Therefore, many devices now use IPv6 addresses.

IPv6
The IPv6 address format is much different than the IPv4 format. It contains eight sets of
four hexadecimal digits and uses colons to separate each block. An example of an IPv6
address is: 2602:0445:0000:0000:a93e:5ca7:81e2:5f9d. There are 3.4 x 1038 or 340
undecillion) possible IPv6 addresses, meaning we shouldn't run out of IPv6 addresses
anytime soon.

URL
Stands for "Uniform Resource Locator." A URL is the address of a specific webpage or file
on the Internet. For example, the URL of the TechTerms website is
"http://techterms.com." The address of this page is
"http://techterms.com/definition/url" and includes the following elements:
 http:// – the URL prefix, which specifies the protocol used to access the location
 techterms.com – the server name or IP address of the server
 /definition/url – the path to the directory or file
While all website URLs begin with "http," several other prefixes exist. Below is a list of
various URL prefixes:

 http – a webpage, website directory, or other file available over HTTP

 ftp – a file or directory of files available to download from an FTP server
 news – a discussion located within a specific newsgroup
 telnet – a Unix-based computer system that supports remote client connections
 gopher – a document or menu located on a gopher server
 wais - a document or search results from a WAIS database
 mailto - an email address (often used to redirect browsers to an email client)
 file - a file located on a local storage device (though not technically a URL because
it does not refer to an Internet-based location)
You can manually enter a URL by typing it in the address bar of your web browser. For
example, you might enter a website URL printed on a business card to visit the company's
website. Most URLs, however appear automatically when you click on a link or open a
bookmark. If the server name in the URL is not valid, your browser may display a "Server
not found" error. If the path in the URL is incorrect, the server may respond with a 404
error.

NOTE: URLs use forward slashes to denote different directories and cannot contain
spaces. Therefore, dashes and underscores are often used to separate words within a web
address. If your browser produces an error when you visit a specific webpage, you can
double-check the URL for typos or other errors. If you find an error, you can manually edit
the URL and press Enter to see if it works.

TCP/IP
Stands for "Transmission Control Protocol/Internet Protocol." These two protocols were
developed in the early days of the Internet by the U.S. military. The purpose was to allow
computers to communicate over long distance networks. The TCP part has to do with the
verifying delivery of the packets. The IP part refers to the moving of data packets between
nodes. TCP/IP has since then become the foundation of the Internet. Therefore, TCP/IP
software is built into all major operating systems, such as Unix, Windows, and the Mac
OS.

DNS
The DNS server is that translator between the hostname and IP address.
Stands for "Domain Name System." Domain names serve as memorizable names for
websites and other services on the Internet. However, computers access Internet devices
by their IP addresses. DNS translates domain names into IP addresses, allowing you to
access an Internet location by its domain name.

Thanks to DNS, you can visit a website by typing in the domain name rather than the IP
address. For example, to visit the Tech Terms Computer Dictionary, you can simply type
"techterms.com" in the address bar of your web browser rather than the IP address
(67.43.14.98). It also simplifies email addresses, since DNS translates the domain name
(following the "@" symbol) to the appropriate IP address.

To understand how DNS works, you can think of it like the contacts app on your
smartphone. When you call a friend, you simply select his or her name from a list. The
phone does not actually call the person by name, it calls the person's phone number. DNS
works the same way by associating a unique IP address with each domain name.

Unlike your address book, the DNS translation table is not stored in a single location.
Instead, the data is stored on millions of servers around the world. When a domain name
is registered, it must be assigned at least two nameservers (which can be edited through
the domain name registrar at any time). The nameserver addresses point to a server that
has a directory of domain names and their associated IP addresses. When a computer
accesses a website over the Internet, it locates the corresponding nameserver and gets the
correct IP address for the website.

Since DNS translation creates additional overhead when connecting to websites, ISPs
cache DNS records and host the data locally. Once the IP address of a domain name is
cached, an ISP can automatically direct subsequent requests to the appropriate IP
address. This works great until an IP address changes, in which case the request may be
sent to the wrong server or the server will not respond at all. Therefore, DNS caches are
updated regularly, usually somewhere between a few hours and a few days.

WHAT IS AN IP ADDRESS?
An IP address, short for Internet Protocol address, is an identifying number for a piece of
network hardware. Having an IP address allows a device to communicate with other
devices over an IP-based network like the internet.

Most IP addresses look like this:

151.101.65.121
Other IP addresses you might come across could look more like this:

2001:4860:4860::8844
There's a lot more on what those differences mean in the IP Versions (IPv4 vs IPv6) section
below.

What is an IP Address Used For?

An IP address provides an identity to a networked device. Similar to a home or business
address supplying that specific physical location with an identifiable address, devices on
a network are differentiated from one another through IP addresses.

If I'm going to send a package to my friend in another country, I have to know the exact
destination. It's not enough to just put a package with his name on it through the mail
and expect it to reach him. I must instead attach a specific address to it, which you could
do by looking it up in a phone book.

This same general process is used when sending data over the Internet. However, instead
of using a phone book to look up someone's name to find their physical address, your
computer uses DNS servers to look up a hostname to find its IP address.

For example, when I enter a website into a browser, like www.lifewire.com, into my
browser, my request to load that page is sent to DNS servers that look up that hostname
(lifewire.com) to find its corresponding IP address (151.101.65.121).

Without the IP address attached, my computer will have no clue what it is that I'm after.

Different Types of IP Addresses

Even if you've heard of the IP addresses before, you may not realize that there are specific
types of IP addresses. While all IP addresses are made up of numbers or letters, not all
addresses are used for the same purpose.

There are private IP addresses, public IP addresses, static IP addresses, and dynamic IP
addresses. That's quite a variety! Following those links will give you much more
information on what they each mean. To add to the complexity, each type of IP address
can be an IPv4 address or an IPv6 address... again, more on these at the bottom of this
page.

In short, private IP addresses are used "inside" a network, like the one you probably run
at home. These types of IP addresses are used to provide a way for your devices to
communicate with your router and all the other devices in your private network. Private
IP addresses can be set manually or assigned automatically by your router.

Public IP addresses are used on the "outside" of your network and are assigned by your
ISP. It's the main address that your home or business network uses to communicate with
the rest of the networked devices around the world (i.e. the Internet). It provides a way for
the devices in your home, for example, to reach your ISP, and therefore the outside world,
allowing them to do things like access websites and communicate directly with other
people's computers.

Both private IP addresses and public IP addresses are either dynamic or static, which
means that, respectively, they either change or they don't.

An IP address that is assigned by a DHCP server is a dynamic IP address. If a device does

not have DHCP enabled or does not support it then the IP address must be assigned
manually, in which case the IP address is called a static IP address.

How To Find Your IP Address

Different devices and operating systems require unique steps to find the IP address. There
are also different steps to take if you're looking for the public IP address provided to you
by your ISP, or if you need to see the private IP address that your router handed out.

Finding Your Public IP Address

There are lots of ways to find your router's public IP address but sites like IP Chicken,
WhatsMyIP.org, or WhatIsMyIPAddress.com make this super easy.

These sites work on any network-connected device that supports a web browser, like your
smartphone, iPod, laptop, desktop, tablet, etc.

Finding the private IP address of the specific device you're on isn't as simple.

Finding Your Private IP Address

In Windows, you can find your device's IP address via the Command Prompt, using the
ipconfig command.

Tip: See How Do I Find My Default Gateway IP Address? if you need to find the IP address
of your router, or whatever device that your network uses to access the public Internet.
Linux users can launch a terminal window and enter the command hostname -I (that's a
capital "i"), ifconfig, or ip addr show.

For Mac OS X, use the command ifconfig to find your local IP address.

iPhone, iPad, and iPod touch devices show their private IP address through the Settings
app in the Wi-Fi menu. Tap the small "i" button next to the network it's connected to.
Depending on whether the IP address was assigned via DHCP or was entered manually
will determine which tab (DHCP or Static) you need to choose to see it.

You can see the local IP address of an Android device through Settings > Wireless Controls
> Wi-Fi settings. Just tap on the network you're on to see a new window that shows
network information that includes the private IP address.

IP Versions (IPv4 vs IPv6)

There are two versions of IP: IPv4 and IPv6. If you've heard of these terms, you probably
know that the former is the older, and now outdated, version while IPv6 is the upgraded
IP version.

One reason IPv6 is replacing IPv4 is that it can provide a much larger number of IP
addresses than IPv4 allows. With all the devices we have constantly connected to the
Internet, it's important that there's a unique address available for each one of them.

The way IPv4 addresses are constructed means it's able to provide over 4 billion unique IP
addresses (232). While this is a very large number of addresses, it's just not enough for
the modern world with all the different devices people are using on the Internet.

Think about it – there are several billion people on earth. Even if everyone in the planet
had just one device they used to access the Internet, IPv4 would still be insufficient to
provide an IP address for all of them.

IPv6, on the other hand, supports a whopping 340 trillion, trillion, trillion addresses
(2128). That's 340 with 12 zero's! This means every person on earth could connect billions
of devices to the Internet. True, a bit overkill, but you can see how effectively IPv6 solves
this problem.

Visualizing this helps understand just how many more IP addresses the IPv6 addressing
scheme allows over IPv4. Pretend a postage stamp could provide enough space to hold
each and every IPv4 address. IPv6, then, to scale, would need the entire solar system to
contain all of its addresses.

In addition to the greater supply of IP addresses over IPv4, IPv6 has the added benefit of
no more IP address collisions caused by private addresses, auto-configuration, no reason
for Network Address Translation (NAT), more efficient routing, easier administration, built-
in privacy, and more.

IPv4 displays addresses as a 32-bit numerical number written in decimal format, like
207.241.148.80 or 192.168.1.1. Because there are trillions of possible IPv6 addresses,
they must be written in hexadecimal to display them, like
3ffe:1900:4545:3:200:f8ff:fe21:67cf.

SUBNET MASK
A Subnet mask is a 32-bit number that masks an IP address, and divides the IP address
into network address and host address. Subnet Mask is made by setting network bits to
all "1"s and setting host bits to all "0"s. Within a given network, two host addresses are
reserved for special purpose, and cannot be assigned to hosts. The "0" address is assigned
a network address and "255" is assigned to a broadcast address, and they cannot be
assigned to hosts.

HOSTNAME
Hostnames may be simple names consisting of a single word or phrase, or they may be
structured. On the Internet, hostnames may have appended the name of a Domain Name
System (DNS) domain, separated from the host-specific label by a period ("dot"). In the
latter form, a hostname is also called a domain name.