I’ve been diving into the public and private IP addresses, as I could understand public IP addresses are assigned by Internet Service Providers, but I couldn’t understand how and by whom are private IP addresses assigned. I couldn’t understand as well what’s the purpose of private IP addresses.
Any help is appreciated. Thank you for helping me out.
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A public IP address is accessible to anyone on the internet. This means that the network node (a router or switch, in terms of physical hardware) can be reached entirely by navigating through other public network nodes on the internet.
A private IP address is only accessible to someone in the private subnet that contains that IP address. This means that the network node can only be reached by first navigating to a node on the boundary of the private subnet, a gateway node. Private nodes only publish their IP addresses to these gateway nodes. The gateway node will selectively determine if it should route traffic the private nodes based on the origin of the request. A request originating from inside the private subnet will be routed. A request originating from outside will not. From the perspective of someone outside the private subnet, all of the private IP addresses in the subnet are inaccessible and invisible. Not even possible to tell if there’s something listening on that address or not.
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