You can refer to your local machine in many ways, in different contexts, locally within the same machine or within a private network.
Within the context of our local machine, we can use the 127.0.0.0/8 loopback addresses. Anything sent to the loopback address is sent back to the sender; therefore, we can use 127.0.0.1 to refer to our own machine.
If your computer is part of a private network, your computer will be assigned an IP on this network. These private IP addresses have a limited range, as defined in RFC 1918:
- 10.0.0.0 - 10.255.255.255 (10/8 prefix)
- 172.16.0.0 - 172.31.255.255 (172.16/12 prefix)
- 192.168.0.0 - 192.168.255.255 (192.168/16 prefix)
0.0.0.0 is a special address, which includes both your local loopback addresses ...
