IP Addresses Explained: Master Subnetting Basics for IT Pros

IP addresses. They're pure magic. They make the internet work. That's why pretty much everything in my house has an IP address. My phone watch light bulbs, oven car,

my kids, my toilet. Well, not yet. I really. Don't like touching the toilet like this. But what is an IP address and what makes the magic? Let's talk about that.

In fact, this is the first episode in a series I'm calling you suck at subnetting because we all kind of suck at subnetting just a little bit, right? And in this series,

we're gonna start with, Hey, what the junk is an IP address, which we're addressing today, ah, addressing. And by the end, you'll have master chief ninja subnetting skills, whatever you wanna call it,

you're gonna be good at subnetting. That's what I'm trying to get across. And in case you don't know, knowing IP, addressing and subnetting is like acquired skill for everything in it.

Like every single job, networking, ethical, hacking security cloud, it all involves an IP address. And it all involves delicious subnet. This video is also part of my CCNA series, sponsored by boon software.

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Plus they've got C H all kinds of stuff. They have the best, like I'm not kidding the best practice exams in the industry. So if you're like, yeah, yeah, I'm not sure if I'm gonna pass security. Plus they'll tell you,

try their practice exam. And they'll tell you, anyways, IP or internet protocol addresses, they're kind of like phone numbers that we assign to all of our devices.

So when my toilet wants to send a message to my apple, watch letting him know how I'm doing. He totally can because they have a way to communicate with each other.

They have a phone number, well kind of, we use phone numbers to text each other, but devices don't, they use IP addresses and they lo little different for sure. And we'll talk about how weird they work,

but just know that without an IP address, they can't. So that's why we give them one. It opens up communication, not to mention and gives your devices the ability to connect to the internet

because don't you want everything to be able to connect to your toilet. Yeah. So now that we know that if a device wants to talk to any other device, it needs an IP address.

That means that the device you're watching me on right now, it has an IP address. FBI, open up because it's talking to YouTube, YouTube's talking back to it. Let's go find your IP address, whatever you have.

We can find it on windows. We're gonna launch a thing called CMD or command props, go and search for that and open it on Mac and Linux is gonna be a thing called

terminal, launch that. And for your phone or any other device, I'll show you here in a second here in windows, one command type in IP config, all one word, just like that, and hit enter on Linux type in I F config,

all one word hit, enter on your phone, go into your settings, jump into your wifi info, dive deep into the interface and you'll see, Hey, there's an IP address. And looking back at windows here is the IP address.

You'll know it because it'll say I P D four, address on the side over here and don't let the V4 confuse you. Ignore it for now. Now let's talk about the sucker, the IP address.

He looks kind weird, kind of dorky technical. He's a mess of numbers, separated by dots, three dots. So that's already strange by itself, but then we have this guy and then this guy, what are they doing? Well,

they are basically your IP addresses best friends. Well, tell, talk more about them here in a bit, but this guy right here is Mr. Subnet mask. At least that's what he's called and windows over here on Macker Lennox,

you might see net mask, same thing. And then this gal right here is miss default gateway. She also goes by default router or just router for short, but enough about them.

Let's talk about the star of the show. The one we care about the IP address and let's first cover. How in the world did he even get here? How did your device get this number?

Who gave it to him? Is it safe? Who gave it to you device? Actually, that's a legit question. Sometimes you can get a bad IP address, different video for another time. So how did your device get this IP address?

Did it just fall out of the sky? Yeah, kind of. If you're using wifi, you see in your homes and in your businesses, we have this thing called a router. It may look familiar.

It might be hiding in your closet. A underneath that sweater you got for Christmas, which by the way, rescue it, get that sweater off of him. He has to breathe. It gets hot in there.

The router is the Oprah of your IP addresses. What? Every time a device connects to your network, she says, here, here's an IP address. Here's an IP address for you and for you, for you,

everyone gets an IP address. Now this dark and mysterious magic known as DHCP is why this works. If you wanna learn more about that, we'll talk, talk about that later,

but essentially Oprah gives your devices, IP addresses. That's what I want your takeaway to be. Write that down. Okay. Now looking back at the IP address, let me ask you a question.

How is it that I know that your IP address starts with 1 92, 1 68, 1 like most of you that is your IP address, right? Creepy. Especially since each of these numbers can be any number between zero and two to

55. So your IP address could be ten three, two, one, or it could even be 1, 2, 3, 4. So why is it that most of your IP addresses start with 1 92, 1 68 1?

Well, there's a lot of reasons actually, that I'm not gonna go into because it does get pretty complicated, but the short and easy answer is that it's Oprah.

Oprah decided that that's what your IP address should be, should start with. It always comes back to Oprah. And the way that Oprah tells us that each IP address in your network in your

house is gonna start with 1 92, 1 6, 8. One is through Mr. Subnet mask. I told you, come gonna play here in a bit. Here he is. He looks even weirder than the IP address. And honestly,

he's a pretty complex dude. We're gonna spend a lot of time getting to know this guy in this series, but real quick, can I show you a hack?

That's gonna save you like a billion hours. Now notice that Mr. Subnet mask does look pretty similar to the IP address. He's got four sets of numbers and three dots.

And if you assume that the first number in the IP address matches up to the first number in the subnet mask, you'd be exactly right. In fact, they all match up two to two to three to three, four to four.

Now here comes the hack. When you see 2 55 in an OCTE, which by the way, each of these sections separated by a dot, we call them octets. We will dive deeper into why we call them that. And yeah, it's,

it's gonna get a lot more nerdy and so much more fun. I can't tell you more. Just know they're called octets for now. Just calm down. So anyways, back to the hack, if that number is a 2 55,

then we know that the corresponding number or the corresponding OCTE will always stay the same within your network. That is so looking at our subnet mask here, we know the first three octets. So the first three numbers are 2 55,

which tells us that the first three numbers in P address 1 9, 2, 1 6, 8, and one will always stay the same in our network. We can confidently say that every single device in your network at your house or

your business, if they look like this, they're gonna start with 1 9 2 1 6 8 1. And that brings us to the last number over here, the zero what's this guy doing this zero is telling us that, Hey,

this slot last number, it can be whatever you want, whatever your heart's desire, as long at just between zero and 2 55, but still whatever you want, you can use. 'em all. So to sum it up,

when you see a 2 55, that number's locked in, these numbers will never change, but the zero tells us the final number totally will, based on what device it's assigned to.

So if you'll allow me to get a bit nerdier and go a bit deeper in the networking world, we refer to these numbers right here as the network portion of the IP address.

And then on this side, the side that'll change based on what device it's assigned to. We call that the host portion because in networking and it, in general,

when we have devices on a network, your phone, your watch, your toilet, we call those hosts. Your toilet is a host and it has an IP address. Now what? I just put that in your pocket. Don't let nobody hack it. This will become very,

very important later, but now let me ask you a question. Why is it important that we have to know the network portion of the IP address? Why do we have to know that the IP addresses in our network start with 1 92 0.1

6, 8 1 analogy time. We can also think about an IP address, like the address of our house. Like, you know, the place you and tell you what, why don't you comment below your home address? I'm totally kidding.

Don't do that. Are you crazy? Don't do that. But anyways, you live in a house in that house. Most of the time, I think always is going to be on a street, right?

And let's say your street that you live on is private drive. If you know where that's from, comment below and because you're probably not the only house on private drive,

you can't just say, Hey, send me a edge on private drive. I live on private drive. Oh, houses need windows. I know it looked kind of weird. Hold on, let me draw some windows. So anyways,

we'll assign a unique house number to you. So you might live at four private drive and your buddy might live at five and then six and then 7, 8, 9. You got it. Right?

So if I were to send you some network check coffee, it would go to four private drive. So I sent you some coffee and it was so can dang delicious that you wanted to

bring some over to your friend, your buddy Bernard, over at six private drive. There's Bernard, no hang tight. Here's where the analogy comes into play with IP addresses.

So would you call ups and say, Hey, I have some coffee. I wanna give Bernard, come pick it up and take it to Bernard. No. Now why would you do that? Bernard lives on your same street.

So as you're preparing to send Bernard some coffee, you would go, oh, Hey, Bernard lives on private drive. Therefore I can just walk outside and hand it to him because we're so stinking

close. We're in the same street. We're in the same neighborhood. So if you're tracking with me here, this analogy feels weird. I don't know why is it me? It's probably me.

If you're tracking with me the network portion of our IP address, the thing that stays the same is akin to private drive and the host portion.

The thing that does change is the house address the house number four, or it could be five, or it could be six based on who you're sending it to with our devices in our

network. It's the same for, if you wanna share a picture from your phone to your computer, your phone will look at the IP address of the computer and go, oh, Hey, yo,

we're on the same network. 1 92, 1 68, 1 he's in my neighborhood. I can just walk over and give it to him. But now let's say that the coffee's really, really,

really good and Bernard wants to send it to his buddy. Dr. Strange over here on Bleecker street. So Bernard and looks at Dr. Strange's address. And he goes, okay. He Bleecker, I can't say it.

Bleecker street. I don't live on Bleecker street. I can't just walk outside and hand coffee to Dr. Strange. In fact, he lives all the way in New York. He's far away or maybe another dimension.

I don't know what what's going on. So Bernard realizing he needs help. We'll just call ups and have them come pick it up and take coffee to Dr. Strange. And in the same way, my laptop may wanna out to netflix.com,

which has this IP address. And it's in a completely different network. And my laptop will go, dude. He's not in my network. He's not in my same neighborhood. I need some help.

I need to call ups except in this scenario, it's not ups. It's miss default gateway or miss default router, AKA router, your computer or any on your network will look at it's IP address.

And then look at Mr. Subnet mask and go, huh? My network is 1 9, 2, 1 60 eight.one. Netflix is not in my neighborhood. I need help. Please help me. Miss default, gateway, miss default gateway.

She knows everything. She knows exactly how to get to Netflix and she'll take it from there off on fact, miss default gateway. She's actually your router.

She's Oprah. I know mind blown the entire time. Never saw it coming. What a plot twist. That's some Scooby do stuff right there. So sum that part up. Whenever any device in your network,

whether it's your home network or network at a business, or pretty much any network in the world when it wants to talk to something, not on its same street and it wants to talk to something outside its network.

It has to talk to its router. It's default gateway to get out. It has to talk to Oprah. Write that down now real quick. I got a challenge question for you. Let's see if you've been paying attention,

looking at my network here, which might be the exact same as your network. I told you, this is one of the most common networks in the world, or did I tell you that? By the way,

this is one of the most common networks in the world. My kid just screamed for private networks, looking at this IP address and looking at this subnet mask.

How many possible IP addresses are available to assign to devices in your network? And by the way, if you could figure this out, that pretty much covers the majority of networks.

I'm not sure what the statistics are, but I think like network Chuck's opinion, like 95% of all networks kind of look like this. So go ahead and comment your answer below just raw, without me telling you,

I'm curious what it will be, but let's walk through it real quick and you're probably wrong. Sorry. Looking at this, we know 2 55 and the sub mask means this number locked in,

stays the same. So does this one and this one because of the 2 55, but over here is zero. We know this last number can be anything as long as it's between

zero and 255, which would give us a total, including zero of 256 IP addresses party. We get a ton, but you're wrong. It's not 250 E six because like everything in life,

there's a catch. There's always tax. There's always extra fees. You always have to look for that life lesson. Anyways, here we go. Where's the catch. Where's the extra fees in our networking. Well, first of all,

right off the bat, there are always two IP addresses that are reserved, that you cannot touch. You cannot use. And any given network first it's the first IP address and your network.

So in this one, it would be 1 92 do 1 68, 1 0 that one's untouchable. It's referred to as the network address. He's a leader. He's the first, the firstborn son. You can't touch him.

The second IP address you can't touch is the last IP address in your network. And this particular network we're talking about. It'd 1 92, 1 6, 8, 1 dot 2 55. This guy,

dude, he talks way much. He's a chatty, Kathy. We call him the broadcast address because when you tell him something, he tells it to everyone. Can't keep a secret. And that's legit what he does.

When you send anything to a broadcast address, the last IP address, any network, it literally will broadcast it out to everybody. It's like, Hey everyone, guess what? So don't tell him anything unless you want everyone to know.

So that's two, you can't touch. And then one you really have to think about, and it might just be this default gateway. There has to be a router. Oh, I just drove over that.

There has to be a router in your network and that will take up one IP address. So we're now three IP addresses shy of 256, which gives us a total of 250 free usable IP addresses.

If you got that right, you're on your way to becoming a subnetting master. Congrats. If you didn't, that's totally okay. This is so brand new and can be very complex, but don't worry.

We're gonna hold hands. No, I'm gonna hold your hand and walk you through this. So little coffee break. We covered so much in this video. Oh, that's cold coffee.

That's how long I've been here recording it's cold coffee. Like the video. Cause I just sip some cold coffee. I, I, ah, I need to heat it up, but anyways, let's take a look. What we've covered so far in this video,

we talked about IP addresses, right? We talked about that. Everything in your, your network, in your house that wants to connect and talk either to other devices in your

network or two devices outside the network on the internet, Netflix or just your toilet, having a conversation with your watch. If any of that needs to happen, you have to have an IP address,

basically the cell phone number of your devices, unless you actually have a cell phone. Then it also has a cell phone number and an IP address. Very confusing.

I know Chuck get better at analogies. You also get a chance to meet Mr. Subnet, a very complex and mysterious dude. You'll get to know a lot better in the coming videos.

He also goes by net mask and he tells us and our devices what our IP addresses and our entire network start with. He tells us what street we live on. And this network right here,

this street we live on is 1 90, 2 60 eight.one because of our little hack, the 2 55 S then finally you met miss default gateway, AKA default router or router or Oprah. She does it all.

Not only does she give all your devices in your network N IP address, but she could help you get outside your network. If you wanna go visit Netflix or network, check.com or even better network,

chuck.coffee. So anyways, that's IP addresses and I just realized I spelled IP address wrong. Let's add the extra D cool. We're good. And lemme tell you, yes,

we are just scratching the service. We're gonna get much more complex on how IP addresses work in the world and, and your home network and in your business.

And you'll learn that killer skill, that crazy awesome, old that you pretty much need for anything in it. Subnetting, because let me tell you, this example we've been working with here is very,

very simple, but don't you worry. You're gonna learn the skills to make this crazy complex and fun. And by the end, you will be a master chief ninja subnet master.

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That's all I have explaining IP addressing is not easy. So let's make sure you hack the YouTube algorithm today. If that light button subscribe notification bell comment,

we gotta hack YouTube today. Ethically of course. And yeah, that's really all I got. Whew, I'll get you guys next time.