IP Addresses
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- sp0
an ip address is a 32 bit number, broken into a 4 (and now 6) section dotted decimal notation.
e.g.: xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx
there are 4 classes of ip, and the first number represents what class the ip address belongs to.
the rest deal with host information.
each number, asigned to a machine, serves as the address to that machine on the network. since the internet is nothing more than a collection of smaller internets (lans, extranets, the web, mail, dns, etc) each machine on the network must have a unique identifier.
in a nutshell that is what an ip is.
now, there is a lot more to it than that - and if you really want to know you should read some info on tcp/ip and dns/bind.
an ip is unverisally traceable - whether it is a printer, mail server, web server, etc...the connection method doesn't matter at all. so yes, 56k and dsl use the same ip address methodolgy.
borrowed? i'm not quite sure what this even means? i'm gonna say no on that one.
ips are unique. which poses a large problem since there are so many machines online now, ips are running out.
which was the reason for dns in the first place. instead of relying on a unique ip address, servers now look for domain names and host information. which is why you can run a single apache server, with one ip address and configure countless virtual domains - each having a unique name, and apache will resolve to the correct paths based on the httpd.conf.
makes life easier - although there are plenty of bugs in this idealogy.
also, IPv6 is now a reality, although public internets don't support it very well yet (apache 2.x does, yea...) but you can set up VPN's and private Lans and networks using IPv6 and they preform very swell.
:)
like i said, if you are really interested, pick up a dns/bind book and a tcp/ip book sometime.