Basics of IP Address and Their Types

Types of IP Address

A device in a network needs an IP (Internet Protocol) address to communicate with the other devices. IP address is a unique – 32bit logical address assigned to each device which is connected to a network. A unique address mostly used by computers to communicate over a network that uses IP as its basic protocol is known as IP address.

Different types of IP address are:

Unicast Address 

Multicast Address 

Broadcast Address 

Unicast IP Address 

Unicast means one to one communication. When a data packet is sent from a host with destination address which represents a single host, a unicast communication takes place. Hence, a Unicast IP address is an IP address which uniquely identifies a host in a particular network. Each host present on the Internet has at least one unique unicast IP address. These addresses belong to Class-A, Class-B, Class-C. For example, the IP address 192.168.1.20 is a unicast IP address.

Unicast address – 192.168.1.20

Multicast IP Address

Multicast means one-to-many communication. When a data packet is sent from a host to a group of hosts, a multicast communication takes place. Multicast addresses belong i to class D addresses. These addresses define an address for a group. A system on a multicast network can have more than one Class D multicast addresses. If a system has five multicast addresses, then the system belongs to five different multicast groups. For example, 224.0.0.1 is a multicast address.

Multicast address – 224.0.0.1

Broadcast IP Address 

Broadcast addressing means one to all communication. A Broadcast address is an IP address that allows a data packet to be sent to all machines on a given network. Data packet is broadcasted only at local level and not at global level. The broadcast address for a network is the last address of that network. Using a broadcast IP address, a packet can be sent to the entire subnet using a private IP address space. For example, to broadcast a packet to an entire class B subnet using a private IP address space, the 

broadcast address would be 172.16.255.255 for 172.16.x.x network.

Each IP address has its own Broadcast address for example

IP 10.0.0.1    and its broadcast IP address will be 10.255.255.255

In some applications, the hosts in a network need to send messages to all the hosts in a network. For example, transmitting information such as weather report, stock market changes and live radio programs would work best by broadcasting the data over the network to all the hosts.

Also Read : Networking Switches Fundamentals and Types