IP addressing, subnets, and DHCP - Windows Tutorial

- [Instructor] To get the most out of Windows 10 in either a home or business setting, you must be able to connect to a network. That network can be the internet, an internal company intranet, or something less complex like a work group, or it could be a combination of these. You can find the available networks by clicking the Network icon on the task bar. You'll click to any network you see there to connect to it, noting that you may have to input credentials. You can see here I'm connected to the linkedin.biz network. All computers on a network have one thing in common and that's a unique address. This address defines the computer on the network in the same way an address on a house identifies it on a street. Here's an example of addresses that belong to houses. You can see they are all similar but different. 1400 defines the block and the numbers after it define the house. In the same way, computers have unique addresses too. Here's an example of that. You can see these addresses are similar but unique as well. They all start with 10.10.1. This part defines the network. The other numbers define the computers. Having an address on the network makes it possible for data to know where to go once it's sent. Without addresses, a network wouldn't function. Addresses assigned to computers are called internet protocol addresses or IP addresses. You'll learn more about that shortly. The most popular way to assign a computer an IP address is to use Dynamic Host Configuration Protocol or DHCP which is a technology that automatically assigns each node on a network a unique address. A computer is assigned an address when it joins if DHCP is enabled. For now, IPv4 is the networking protocol that is most widely used for networking computers. An IPv4 address consists of 32 bits of zeros or ones and are offered in groups of eight. An IP address might look like this. When you convert these four sections called octets to our base 10 numbering system, they convert to 192.16.17.4. You can learn how to do this conversion manually or type it into any base two to base 10 conversion calculator available on the internet. Let's find your IP address. Open a command prompt by typing CMD in the search bar on the task bar and clicking it in the results. At the command prompt, type ipconfig and press enter. Make a note of what your IPv4 address is and you might also see that DHCP is enabled. There are a few other terms you'll see here and it's important to understand them too. One is a subnet mask. A subnet mask is also a 32-bit number and it defines the part of the network where the client resides called the subnet. To return to our home address analogy, this can be compared to the city or zip code associated with the home. The default gateway address lets network segments communicate with each other. You'll need a default gateway address to access the internet or another network. Now we'll type ipconfig, a space, a forward slash, and all to see more terms. And I'll press enter. A domain name system DNS server address let's the client computer resolve computer or device names into IPv4 or IPv6 addresses. This means that if you want to communicate with another node on the network, you can type its name and not its IP address. This is the service that allows you to type something like www.linkedin.com instead of its associated IP address when using the internet. There's also IPv6. This is a newer addressing scheme that offers many more IP addresses when compare to the older IPv4. The IPv4 addresses are all used up, so a new system is required and is being phased in. IPv6 addresses are much more complex and are base 16 numbers. Like IPv4, these addresses can be automatically applied via DHCP. Take a look at your IPv6 address if you have one. Since all computers need to have their own unique address, the Internet Assigned Numbers Authority, IANA, has defined the address ranges that can be used for private use behind a router and on a local network. This means that your computers don't need a completely unique IP address. You may see what's shown here for class C matches what also represents your local IPv4 address. Before we end, let's take a look at the local area connection dialog box and learn how to make changes to IP addresses in DHCP should you ever want to and we can see if DHCP is enabled or not. Right click the Network icon on the task bar and click Open Network and Internet Settings. Here we'll click Change adapter options. Right click your network connection and click Properties. Click Internet Protocol Version four and click Properties again, and let's have a look here. We can see that DHCP is enabled because we are set to obtain an IP address automatically or you can click Use the following IP address if you'd like to type your own. Sometimes network administrators assign static IP addresses to nodes like printers that never change their physical location or that need to be accessed by their IP address alone, or to computers that play a significant role in a network like a specific server. As far as clients go though, DHCP is by far the most popular addressing system. There are many more networking terms to explore. Return to the command prompt if you're interested in learning more. You can easily look up what any terms mean that you aren't familiar with or that we didn't cover here. When you're ready, close the command prompt window.