Perhaps one of the most important and well known protocols is the Internet Protocol or, if you like, IP. IP gives us the ability to uniquely identify each computer in a network or on the Internet.

This section provides one of the most comprehensive analysis available online for the IP protocol. To make it easier for the reader, we have broken the analysis into smaller sections with many diagrams and illustrations.

When a computer is connected to a network or the Internet, it is assigned a unique IP address. If you're connecting to the Internet, chances are you're given an IP automatically by your ISP, if you're connecting to your LAN then you're either given the IP automatically or you manually configure the workstation with an assigned IP.

We cannot emphasise the importance of fully understanding how the IP Protocol works as it is the foundation to understanding how network communications work. DNS, FTP, SNMP, SMTP, HTTP and a lot of other protocols and services rely heavily on the IP protocol in order to function correctly, so you can immediately see that IP is more than just an IP Address on your workstation.

Since the Internet Protocol is a big subject we've split the covered material between a number of articles in order to make it easy to read and learn about.

Here is a summary of what's covered:

• Section 1: Binary and the Internet Protocol. Here we cover a few basic Binary concepts and get to see how Binary and IP fit together.
• Section 2: Internet Protocol Header. Find out how the Internet Protocol fits in the OSI Model. Also includes a detailed 3d diagram of the IP Header which shows the fields that exist in the IP Header
• Section 3: Internet Protocol Classes. We get to see the 5 different IP Classes and analyse them in Binary. Also you get to learn about the Network ID and Host ID in an IP Address.