With a total of 2^32 IPv4 addresses, out of which approximately just 3.7 billion are public addresses, there are literally more people and devices than there are IP addresses. In dynamic NAT, a private IP address is mapped to a public IP but from a pool of public IP addresses. In static NAT, one private IP is mapped to one public IP. NAT is a translation of a private IP to a public one, and consists of three major types: static, dynamic, and PAT. Public addresses are necessary for establishing external connectivity to other networks, most notably the 'Worldwide Web' (www) of the Internet. Private addresses are used in Local Area Networks (LAN).

To understand the significance of public and private IP addresses, let's have a look at a concept called NAT (Network Address Translation) and PAT (Port Address Translation). In this example screenshot, my IPv4 address is 10.1.1.2 and the gateway is 10.1.1.1. First, go to your Activities screen and type Network (for a wired connection) or Wi-Fi (for wireless). If you're using Linux, you can find your IP address using some basic desktop utilities. Also, some of the noted commands use a third-party website to get the IP Finding your IP address in the GNOME desktop Note: Some utilities need to be installed on your system based on the Linux distro you are using. (Fedora) Wifi-Settings→ click the setting icon next to the Wifi name that you are connected to → Ipv4 and Ipv6 both can be seen.The following commands will get you the private IP address of your interfaces: The following commands will get you the IP address list to find public IP addresses for your machine: These are private IP addresses, but both would have the same public IP address. For example, my laptop is connected with the IP address 192.168.0.5, and my phone is connected with 192.168.0.8. All the devices connected to the same WiFi have private IP addresses locally identified by the range provided above. Your WiFi router has a public IP, which is the WAN (wide-area network) IP address, and it will be the same for any device connected to that WiFi. IPv6 was introduced to tackle the foreseeable exhaustion of IPv4 addresses in the near future.Īs a network engineer, I recommend not sharing your machine’s public IP address with anyone.

The total number of bits is 128, which means there are 2 ^128-340 undecillion!-possible IPv6 addresses. IPv6 addresses have a more complex format using hex numbers. There are 2 ^32 (approximately 4 billion) possible IPv4 addresses. IPv4 addresses have the format x.x.x.x, where x=0 to 255.

Free online course: RHEL Technical Overviewįurthermore, there are two types of IP addresses: IPv4 and IPv6.

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