In the Internet addressing architecture, a private network is a network that uses private IP address space, following the standards set by RFC 1918 for Internet Protocol Version 4 (IPv4), and RFC 4193 for Internet Protocol Version 6 (IPv6).
In the Internet addressing architecture, a private network is a network that uses private IP address space, following the standards set by RFC 1918 for Internet Protocol Version 4 (IPv4), and RFC 4193 for Internet Protocol Version 6 (IPv6).
These addresses are commonly used for home, office, and enterprise local area networks (LANs), when globally routable addresses are not mandatory, or are not available for the intended network applications. Under IPv4, the private IP address spaces were originally defined in an effort to delay IPv4 address exhaustion, but they are also a feature of IPv6, the next generation Internet Protocol.
These addresses are characterized as private because they are not globally delegated, meaning that they are not allocated to any specific organization, and IP packets addressed with them cannot be transmitted through the public Internet. Anyone may use these addresses without approval from a regional Internet registry (RIR). If such a private network needs to connect to the Internet, it must use either a network address translator (NAT) gateway, or a proxy server.
