IP Addressing

An IP (Internet Protocol) address is a unique identifier for a node or device or host connection on an IP network. An IP address is a 32 bit binary number usually represented as 4 decimal values, each value comes from 8 bits binary value. So each value is minimum 0 and maximum 255 (known as octets) and separated by decimal points. This is known as dotted decimal notation.
Example: 140.178.200.220
It hides the binary digits that required for understanding the IP addressing, so useful to view the values in their binary form.
140     .178     .200     .220
10001100.10110010.11001000.11011100
Every IP address consists of two parts, one represents the network and one represents the node/host. The Class of the address and the subnet mask determine which part belongs to the network address and which part belongs to the host address.