IP Addressing and Classes

IP – Internet Protocol

IP or IP address is a number i.e. ( 216.58.216.165 ) used to indicate the location of a computer or other device on a network.

IP address classes

 IPv4 IP address, there are five classes of available IP ranges:

Class A

Class B

Class C

Class D

Class E

Only A, B, C are commonly used.

Each class has its range of valid IP addresses are shown below :

Class	Address Range	Supports
Class A	1.0.0.1 to 126.255.255.254	Supports 16 million hosts on each of 127 networks.
Class B	128.1.0.1 to 191.255.255.254	Supports 65,000 hosts on each of 16,000 networks.
Class C	192.0.1.1 to 223.255.254.254	Supports 254 hosts on each of 2 million networks.
Class D	224.0.0.0 to 239.255.255.255	Reserved for multicast groups.
Class E	240.0.0.0 to 254.255.255.254	Reserved for future use, or Research and Development Purposes.

Range from 127.0.0.0 are reserved for the loopback or localhost i.e. 127.0.0.1