What is the Full Form of IP ?

IP – Internet Protocol

Internet Protocol Address is used to identify each host in the Internet. The protocol is the part of the TCP/IP Protocol suite and resides in the Internet layer. It is an unreliable, connectionless protocol that is always used with transmission control protocol (TCP), which is a connection-oriented protocol.

The Services Provides by the IP Protocol include:

• Addressing – IP Addresses are unique addresses which gets assigned to each system connected to the Internet. These addresses are used to identify each system on the internet.
• Routing – It is the responsibility of the network layer to handle the task of transferring the packets from source to destination, it is known as Routing.
• Fragmentation – IP fragments the datagram into certain pieces, according to the size which can be handled by the network.

There are 5 different classes of IP Addresses (IPv4) – Class A, B, C, D and E. Each class has different range of valid IP addresses:

Class A     1.0.0.1 to 126.255.255.254
Class B     128.1.0.1 to 191.255.255.254    
Class C     192.0.1.1 to 223.255.254.254    
Class D     224.0.0.0 to 239.255.255.255    
Class E     240.0.0.0 to 254.255.255.254