What is an IP address, anyway?

Networking is one of the classes I never had time for. Before today, I didn’t even have good answers for basic questions about IP addresses: What are IP addresses for? How do I get an IP address? Who assigns IP addresses? Who can see my IP address? Is it bad when people can see it? Is it unique? Is it unique across the whole Internet? For starters, IP stands for Internet Protocol . This is the family of protocols used by the global IP Internet, which we typically refer to as “the Internet” — as in “the Internet with Google and Facebook and stuff.” A protocol is just a definition for how the machines in the Internet talk to each other. e.g. , “first send me a handshake message, then I send you an acknowledgement message…”, etc. The global IP Internet (with an uppercase I) is an implementation of the general concept of internet (with a lowercase I). An internet is so-called because it is an ...