What Is An IP Address?
Computers on the Internet need to find one another in order to communicate. Each computer therefore has a unique identifying number known as an IP address. Examples of IP address are 22.231.113.64 or 194.66.82.11. An IP address always has four numbers separated by dots. Each number has a value of 1 to 255. Although humans tend to refer to Internet hosts by a Domain Names such as 'microsoft.com', computers need IP addresses. To convert a domain name into an IP address, a TCP/IP compliant software program will ask a Domain Name Server to do this conversion. This process is known as a Domain Name Lookup. For more technical information, see RFC 791.