Unique physical address of all computers, assigned by the manufacturer of the network interface card
Organizational Unique Identifier (OUI)
First 24 bits of the MAC address that is vendor-specific, identifies the company that manufactured or sold the device
Vendor-Assigned
Remaining 24 bits of the MAC address that is incrementally and uniquely assigned by the specific vendor of the hardware, denotes the serial number of the individual device
IP address
Address that is usually assigned by the network administrator or internet service provider in order to uniquely and universally identify each device on an IP network
Public IP address
What computers use to find each other online and exchange information, assigned by the Internet Service Provider
Static public IP address
Fixed IP address, used primarily for hosting web pages or services on the Internet
Dynamic public IP address
Chosen from a pool of available addresses and changes each time one connects to the Internet
Private IP address
What computers on a network use to communicate with the router, can change each time they are connected
Network ID/field
Identifies the host that is located on the same physical network
Host ID (host address)
Identifies the individual host (e.g., workstation, server, router, or other TCP/IP host) within a network
Class A address
Uses only the first octet (8 bits) of the 32-bit number to indicate the network address, entire second to the fourth octet is used for host addresses (24 bits)
Network range: 1.0.0.0 to 127.0.0.0
Maximum hosts per network: 16,777,214
Class B address
Uses two (2) of the four (4) octets (16 bits) to indicate the network address, two other octets (16 bits) specify the host addresses
Network range: 128.0.0.0 to 191.255.255.255
Maximum hosts per network: 65,534
Class C address
Uses the first three octets (24 bits) of the IP address to identify the network portion, remaining octet (8 bits) reserved for the host portion
Network range: 192.0.0.0 to 233.255.255.255
Maximum hosts per network: 254
Class D address
Created to enable multicasting using an IP address, a multicast address is a unique address that directs packets with that destination address to predefined groups of hosts
Network range: 224.0.0.0 to 239.255.255.255
First four bits must be 1110
Class E address
Reserved by the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) for its own research
Network range: 240.0.0.0 to 255.255.255.255
First four bits must be 1111
Subnet mask (default mask)
Determines which portion of an IP address identifies the network and which portion identifies the host, represented by four octets with network bits as 1s and host bits as 0s
Default Gateway
Address of the nearest routing device used by the host device to forward addressed packets onto the network