IP Addressing

 To understand IP Addressing a user must first understand the difference between decimal, binary and hexadecimal numbers. First we will start with the simplest. Binary numbers are made up of ones and zeros. Each digit is called a bit, which is short for binary digit. A binary number can only consist of 8 digits. Example- Think about this, each digit of the eight spots represents a light bulb. A one represents the light bulb is on, a zero its off. Now if the light bulb is on it represents a number. Each spot represents a different number. Starting from the left here are the values of each spot. 128-64-32-16-8-4-2-1 Notice anything? Each number reduces itself in half. So if you wanted to represent the number 7 in binary you would have to turn on the appropriate light bulbs to add the numbers up so that they represented the appropriate number. Here is how 7 would look. 00000111 Digits 4-2-1 are all turned on. Add these up and you get the number 7.

To get 72 you need to turn on digits 64 and 8. The binary number would look like this. 01001000