Private network

In the Internet addressing architecture, a private network is a network that uses private IP address space. These addresses are commonly used for home, office, and enterprise local area networks (LANs)

The most common use of these addresses is in residential networks, since most Internet service providers (ISPs) only allocate a single routable IP address to each residential customer, but many homes have more than one networked device, for example, several computers and a printer. Private addresses are also commonly used in corporate networks, which for security reasons, are not connected directly to the Internet. In both cases, private addresses are often seen as enhancing security for the internal network, since it is difficult for an Internet host to connect directly to an internal system.