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
38.103.63.57
But computers communicate in binary. The same IP address but in binary looks like this.
00100110.01100111.00111111.00111001
The four numbers in an IP address are called octets because there 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.