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IP

Last edited on 23 May 2024

The Internet Protocol (IP) is a communications protocol used to connect computers across a network, specifically the Internet. IP consists of rules and regulations for transmission of packets across a network including routing and addressing. IP ensures that the packets of data that travel across a network arrives at the correct location.

IP information is attached to each packet which helps routers direct the packets to the right destination.

DigitalOcean VPC provides several IP address ranges that have been allocated for private networking purposes (RFC 1918):

10.0.0.0 – 10.255.255.255
172.16.0.0 – 172.31.255.255
192.168.0.0 – 192.168.255.255

An IP address contains the network’s address, the resource’s address on the network, and the network mask.

The network address, or network number is an ID for the network associated with the TCP/IP address. Three octets separated by periods represents the network numbers. An IP address with /24 means that the network address uses up to the first three octets of an IP address. However, if the IP address had /16, then the network address uses up to the first two octets of the IP address.

You can use this table to determine how many usable IPs are available for a specific CIDR prefix on DigitalOcean.

Network Size (CIDR Suffix)	Number of Usable IP Addresses
/16	65536
/17	32768
/18	16384
/19	8192
/20	4096
/21	2048
/22	1024
/23	512
/24	256
/28	16

Static Public IP

A static public IP is an IP with a fixed address assigned to a specific device or server. The IP is also accessible over the Internet.

Since the IP address is fixed, devices and servers are identified using static public IPs if needed.

Dynamic Public IP

A dynamic public IP is an IP with a address is assigned or reassigned by an Internet Service Provider (ISP) to a device or server when the device or server is online. The IP is also accessible over the Internet. The IP address can change as the address is deleted once the device or server is offline.