What Is a Private IP Address?
Private IP Address is a range of IP address space that reserved by The Internet Assigned Numbers Authority (IANA) for private Internets (or local networks).
Range of Private IP Address:
- From 10.0.0.0 to 10.255.255.255
- From 172.16.0.0 to 172.31.255.255
- From 192.168.0.0 to 192.168.255.255
Furthermore, IANA also reserved IP addresses in the range of 169.254.0.0 to 169.254.255.255 for Automatic Private IP Addressing.
If you assign static IP addresses to computers on your Local Area Network, you can use 192.168.0.1, 192.168.0.2, etc and a subnet mask of 255.255.255.0. If a DHCP server is used on the LAN, it can assign IP address to computer on the LAN automatically.
The private IP address should be used for local network only.
However, when you connect to the Internet through router, your router will perform “Network Address Translation” and change your private IP address into a public IP address, so that it can send traffic over the Internet. And when the information comes back, your router will reverse and change back to your private IP address and forward the traffic back to your computer.