IP Addresses

I'm a little confused about how ip addresses are assigned.

When your average home user signs up to an ISP, they are assigned a unique IP address, which will be from Class C. But Class C only has 2 million networks? That would be nowhere near enough for all the people around the world. How does this work?

Secondly, a class C network has 255 hosts, does that mean that if your ISP assigned you an IP address of say 220.255.255, you would own all addresses from 220.255.255.1 to 220.255.254 ?

Please read about network address translation (NAT), which allows a large number of private IP addresses to hide behind a single public IP address. One source of information on NAT is http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Network...ss_translation

NAT doesn't answer all your questions, but it's a start.

Mike