IP stands for Internet Protocol, it is a packet based protocol for delivering data across networks. IP address are used to identify a computer or other device on a network or the internet. To make it easer for us humans to remember, IP addresses are normally expressed in decimal format. In the form of a 32-bit numeric address written as four numbers separated by full stops. Each number can be between 0 and 255. An example would be
38.107.179.244
But computers communicate in binary. A binary address looks like this.
01100101.10011000.11010010.10110001
The four numbers in an IP address are called octets because they each have 8 units in the binary form. Since each of the eight units can only have two states 0 or 1, the total number of possible combinations per octet is 28 256. So each octet can contain any value between 0 and 255. Combine the four octets and you get 232 or a possible 4,294,967,296 unique values.