A private network is a network that uses private IP address space, in the Internet addressing architecture, following the standards set by RFC 1918 and RFC 4193. 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 Internet Protocol IPv4, private IP address spaces were originally defined in an effort to delay IPv4 address exhaustion, but they are also a feature of the next generation Internet Protocol, IPv6.
These addresses are characterized as private because they are not globally delegated, meaning they are not allocated to any specific organization, and IP packets addressed by them cannot be transmitted onto 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.
Read more about Private Network: Private IPv4 Address Spaces, Private IPv6 Addresses, Link-local Addresses, Common Uses, Misrouting, Merging Private Networks, Private Use of Other Reserved Addresses
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