The search engine, Google, for example, has the IP address of 173.194.34.174, and is located in Mountain View, California, with the latitude of 37.419 and longitude of -122.057.

An IP address is similar to a phone number – a series of unique numbers designed to establish a unique line of communication between persons. Similar to a phone number's area code, an IP address discloses the geographical coordinates of ISP subscribers.

An Internet connection is established when one IP address connects to another IP address.

Not unlike a phone company, Internet service providers maintain a record of subscribers' IP addresses – the date and time of connection, the IP addresses visited, the duration of the connection, and, if not encrypted, all the plain text communications transmitted between IP addresses.