The analogy that worked for me:

Imagine the internet is like a really, really big neighborhood! And I'm trying to understand how this neighborhood works. I had my first class about this (networks) last Wednesday.

Now, every house in the neighborhood needs an address, right? According to Junior (my teacher), that's what an IP address is! It's like a special name tag for your computer so the internet knows where to send the mail (or something else).

If I got it right, there are two kinds of these addresses, like having two different ways to write the house number:

• IPv4: This is like the old way of writing addresses, like 192.168.1.1. It's just some numbers with dots. But we're running out of these...
• IPv6: This is the new way, and it's super long, like 2001:0db8:85a3:0000:0000:8a2e:0370:7334. It has letters and numbers! The good thing is, we have lots and lots of these, so everyone can have an address.
• Abstraction: We don't see these addresses much because the computer does it for us! It's like magic for us. When you type google.com, the computer knows the secret address.

Going deeper briefly: Think of DNS like a giant phone book for the internet. When you type a website name, your computer asks a DNS server, "Hey, what's the IP address for google.com?". The DNS server looks it up and tells your computer the right IP address so it can connect to the website.

• Dynamic vs. Static: Sometimes the address can change, like if you move houses. That's a dynamic address. If it stays the same, it's static.
• Subnets and Masks: Imagine the neighborhood is divided into smaller streets. These help find the right house faster.

Ports are like the apartment number in that building. A port is a virtual "door" that lets specific apps or services talk to each other.

• Ports are numbers from 0 to 65535 (I dont know why yet...)
• But there are some standards: These ports are reserved for common stuff:

• 80: HTTP (that's regular web traffic)
• 443: HTTPS (secure web traffic - the good stuff!)
• 22: SSH (securely connecting to another computer)
• 21: FTP (transferring files)
• 25: SMTP (sending email)

• Port Conflicts: If two apps try to use the same port, things break. It's like two people trying to go through the same door at once.
• Firewalls: Firewalls can block certain ports for security. Which is good, but also annoying when you're trying to troubleshoot something.

Back in the day, IP addresses were divided into classes (A, B, and C) based on the size of the network. This isn't really used anymore because of something called Classless Inter-Domain Routing (CIDR). But it's still good to know the basics:

• Class A: For HUGE networks. The first number is between 1 and 126.
• Class B: For medium-sized networks. The first number is between 128 and 191.
• Class C: For smaller networks. The first number is between 192 and 223.

CIDR: Imagine you have a big box of crayons, and you want to share them with your friends. The old way (classes) was like saying "You get exactly 10 crayons, you get exactly 50 crayons, you get exactly 100 crayons" - but what if someone only needs 15 crayons? That's wasteful!

CIDR is like having a magic box where you can give exactly the right number of crayons to each person. If someone needs 15 crayons, they get 15. If someone needs 200 crayons, they get 200. No waste!

The /24 part is like a label that tells the computer "Hey, this group can have up to 254 houses in it!" (Just like how a crayon box might say "Contains 24 crayons"). The bigger the number after the slash, the fewer houses can be in that group. It's like having different-sized boxes for different needs!

Hopefully, this is going to be less scary next semester.