How exactly do IP addresses work?

Question

I mean, is one IP address assigned to an area (example: I have the same IP as my next door neighbor??) Or does each home have thier own IP address? I already know that both my computers have the same address. Thanks, hope this wasn't too confusing.

Answer 1

An IP address is similar to street address as it is used to uniquely identify a internet location. Unlike a street address though the IP address is often only temporary in nature. For example when a dial up user connects to an ISP, they are assigned an IP address for the duration of that dial up session. Also IP addresses can be shared such as your situation, where you have two computers that have unique IP addresses on your network but that share a entirely different IP address when connecting to the internet.

Answer 2

there are lots of ip adresses there is one assigned to each device from your loacal area network (lan) and that lan is assigned one from the wide area network (wan) so yes there are certain ip adresses for certain areas then all your wan goes to wherever your isp is and meets up with all the other places in the word and there you have it the internet.
this might help if i am confusing: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IP_adress