A single computer on its own can achieve a lot, but its capability becomes exponentially larger when it can communicate with other computers. This communication occurs among computers that belong to the same network.
A computer can be a part of a network through various means: such as an Ethernet cable or through Wi-Fi. In the previous chapter, we observed the output of the ifconfig command, which showed us the different interfaces through which our device could possibly be connected.
Now that we know a network can have multiple computers, the next question that arises is about how each computer is identified on the network. This is what each device's IP address (or IPv4 address, to be more precise) is used for. It specifies the location and acts as an identifier for each device connected to a network.
The dotted boundary in the figure represents a single network...