Websites And IP Address Issues

Sometimes what you don't know can hurt you, this is definitely the case with IP address's, especially if you are an active internet marketer or are involved in affiliate marketing. Lets run over some basics.

You may see the term IP Address mentioned a lot in relation to web site hosting and be wondering what it means and if it's important for you understand it, or even know anything about it at all.

What Is The IP Address

Every computer or website that wants to be connected to the internet has to have an IP address, otherwise you either will not be able to get online or nobody will be able to find your website. The IP address is simple the computer address that the internet uses to locate your website or computer when you are online.

In the same way if you want people to find your web site they need to your web site address, otherwise no traffic!
When the internet was invented it was never envisioned that there would be hundreds of millions of computers connected, so the address system is limited.

The present system uses a 32-bit number that is divided into four octets (8-bit sections), each octet being in the range 0 to 255, so there are actually 256 options per octet.

You could think of each octet as a byte on a modern computer. Each octet is separated by a decimal point and this type of format is commonly called 'dotted decimal notation' ( e.g. 201.103.61.121 ).

So the lowest number is 0.0.0.0 and the highest is 255.255.255.255

It is important to remember that dotted decimal notation described above only exists to aid human beings to understand IP Addresses, computers translate the 4 octets into a long string of of 1's and 0's.

Why Is The IP Address Important?

In general if you just own one web site it probably is not necessary to learn about this subject but if you are a serious affiliate, internet marketer or someone involved in seo (search engine optimization) you need to understand the basics, especially if you own several web sites, for reasons I'll explain later.

IP address is short for internet protocol address. The IP address is effectively the address of a computer that is connected to the internet. It is in many ways similar to your house street address, if you want mail delivered you need an address and you need to give that address out to people who might want to send you mail.

So how does all this effect me?

Learn more about why cross linking websites and class c IP address issues in part 2 of this article