Finding the right destination
When you open a website, your device uses the website’s IP address to send its request to the right place. DNS looks up an address from a name such as example.com. An IPv4 address looks like 192.0.2.1; IPv6 uses a different longer format and offers many more possible addresses.
Public and private addresses
A public IP address is used on the internet. Private IP addresses are used inside a home or office network. A router often lets several devices with private addresses share one public address when they go online.
In AWS, an Elastic IP is a public IPv4 address you can keep and move between cloud resources.
Not a personal ID
An IP address is not reliable proof of who someone is or exactly where they are. Addresses can be shared or change over time.