Every time you connect to the Internet through dialup or broadband methods, your Internet Service Provider (ISP) will allot to you an IP address from a block of IP addresses it owns.
IP address is a numbering system that allows identifying Computers etc on the Internet.
For example, let us say you are in Delhi trying to connect to the Internet. You probably would be connecting through the BSNL/MTNL dialup connection.
After you dial up (and every time you dial up), BSNL would allot to you an IP address from a block of IP addresses.
This would be unique to you for that particular session (and can be different next time you dialup; but would be from the block of addresses BSNL owns).
This is called dynamic IP address system for general users. Lease line or special customers are allotted static or permanent IP address also.
BSNL would also store in its log to which user this particular IP address was allotted at that particular time on that particular date.
This would allow it to trace back any abusive user at anytime in the future.
Only because of an IP address, it is possible for us to surf the Web, chat etc.
When we type http://www.hotmail. com in our browser, we are actually requesting a page from hotmail.com.
Our ISP would immediately translate hotmail.com to an IP address connected to hotmail.com and request the page. In turn, hotmail.com would return the page to us.
The page from hotmail.com would reach us correctly because hotmail.com would know our IP address (from the time we made the request).
IP addresses are the backbones of the Internet.
The current system provides for about 4 billion unique IP addresses
- shared among all the ISPs and other similar providers around the world.
They range from 0.0.0.0 to 255.255.255. 255 - with a few exceptions in between for technical purposes.
The next generation numbering system - called IP v6 - is being rolled in to accommodate millions more ip addresses.
Briefly, every device connected to the Internet (whether it is a Website, your PC etc) has an IP address attached to it.
It can be tracked and the computer or account which was connected to it at given point of time can be traced by IP address log and time of dispatch in the message header.
So next time be careful if you like to use abusive language or send threats to someone.
Same way rest assured that if the police wants to help you they can trace the computer or ISP account which transmitted the message.
Author
Prof R K Gupta
Courtesy: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/cyber-buddies/
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