definition of ip

[carl_townshend]

Hi all, can someone give me an easy description of ip and what its responsible for ?

[mohammedmahmoud]

Hi there,

An IP address (Internet Protocol address) is a unique address that devices use in order to identify and communicate with each other on a computer network utilizing the Internet Protocol standard (IP)?in simpler terms, a computer address. Any participating network device?including routers, computers, time-servers, printers, Internet fax machines, and some telephones?can have their own unique address. Also, many people can find personal information through IP addresses.

An IP address can also be thought of as the equivalent of a street address or a phone number (compare: VoIP (voice over (the) internet protocol)) for a computer or other network device on the Internet. Just as each street address and phone number uniquely identifies a building or telephone, an IP address can uniquely identify a specific computer or other network device on a network.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IP_address

HTH, please rate if it does,

Mohammed Mahmoud.

[bjw]

In the 7-layer OSI model, IP is a layer 3 protocol. When referred as TCP/IP, TCP is a layer 4 protocol that sits inline with it's layer 3 counterpart IP.

From Wikipedia;

The Internet Protocol (IP) is a data-oriented protocol used for communicating data across a packet-switched internetwork.

IP is a network layer protocol in the internet protocol suite and is encapsulated in a data link layer protocol (e.g., Ethernet). As a lower layer protocol, IP provides the service of communicable unique global addressing amongst computers. This implies that the data link layer need not provide this service. Ethernet provides globally unique addresses except it is not globally communicable (i.e., two arbitrarily chosen Ethernet devices will only be able to communicate if they are on the same bus). The difference is that IP is concerned with the final destination of data packets. Ethernet is concerned with only the next device (computer, router, etc.) in the chain. The final destination and next device could be one and the same (if they are on the same bus) but the final destination could be on the other side of the world.