What’s a Public IP address vs. a Private one?
Public IP addresses are publically accessible (ie, “routable”) IP address numbers. These are the groups of internet address numbers which are assigned to entities who want or need their computers/networks to be publically available from anywhere on the internet. Most ISPs provide public addresses by default, but assign them dynamically to try to maximize the “real time” usage of such addresses. This is important because there are only so many public IP addresses available (until IP version 6 is fully implemented in the internet world – right now and forever into the past, we’ve been at IP v4) and there is an acute shortage of said IP numbers. Several technologies have been developed as a work around for this shortage (such as virtual web hosting – this is more than one web page “name” per single IP address), but there is nonetheless a shortage. We choose to assign public IP addresses to customers who truly need them in an attempt to conserve the internet environment and when we do so,
