IPv4 concepts

In this section, we will focus on IP version 4. As mentioned earlier, electronic devices are able to send and receive electrical signals. The operating systems on network devices and components are able to interrupt these signals, whether it's a high voltage such as a 1 or a low voltage such as a 0. So, why do we need to understand this piece of information? We need to understand how devices communicate on the physical layer. As we've already mentioned, it does this in the form of electrical signals. Computers and other network-related components reassemble these electrical signals into data and process them so that they create information. This information is represented as ones (1s) and zeros (0s) to the computer system, but to we humans, we may see a file such as a document, music file, video file, and so on.

These electrical signals can further be represented as an IP address. As defined by the IANA, an IPv4 address is made of 32-bits. These bits are either a 1 or a 0. For every 8-bits of numbers, there is a period or dot (.) to separate it. These 8-bits are known as an octet. Therefore, there are four octets in a single IPv4 address.