IP everywhere

(This relates to IPV4. I'll cover IPV6 later)

IP addressing is at the core of networked computing. Everyone has heard "Go to this IP address" but what does that actually mean? Let's dig in a bit.

First things first What is an IP address?

An IP Address is an Internet Protocol Address. Similar to the address on your house an IP Address is used to route packets to a host computer on some network.

More specifically an IP Address is a 32 bit number which is usually split up into 4 8 bit 'octets' seperated by a ..

An example is 192.168.10.1

Network(s) and Host(s)

Keep in mind that the Internet/Web is a 'Network of networks.' That just means that within the large Network there are many smaller networks. Examples are your house, job, etc.

Within each one of those networks there are at least one potentially many computers--otherwise known as hosts. An IP Address tells us which network and which individual computer to route the packet to. It does this with a network ID and a host ID.

You can think of a network ID as analogous to the street that you live on and the host ID is like your house number. Using both your street and house number a person could send you a package from anywhere in the world (in theory). Using a network ID and host ID a packet can get routed to any computer on the network.

The network ID and the host ID are of course both in the IP Address so the question is how do you tell which part is which? That is done with a subnet mask.

subnet mask

A subnet mask is another 32 bit number broken up into 4 8 bit octets. As a complete over simplification (because this stuff isn't simple) you can imagine that if an octet has all the bits set to 1 then that octet in the IP Address is part of the network ID. If the subnet mask octet has all the bits set to 0 then that octet of the IP Address is part of the host ID.

Let's take a look at an example. Imagine that we have the following IP Address and subnet mask

IP Address: 192.168.10.1
Subnet mask: 255.255.255.0

Based on the subnet mask the IP Address would be broken down:

Network ID: 192.168.10
Host ID: 1

An important thing to notice is that as the potential count of the networks goes up the potential number of hosts on a network goes down. Conversely as the potential count of the networks goes down the potential number of hosts on a network goes up.

Total potential Host IDs

First a quick rule. A host ID can't be all 0s or all 1s.

A host ID of all 0s is a network ID and a host ID of all 1s is a broadcast ID. More on that later.

In the beginning (again a simplification) there were 3 classes of IP Addresses--A, B, and C. They had the following subnet masks:

Class A 1-126 255.0.0.0
Class B 128-191 255.255.0.0
Class C 192-223 255.255.255.0

Let's do some calculations to figure out how many potential host IDs would be available in this scenario.

Class A

126 networks, 16,777,214 hosts

Class B

16,384 networks, 65,534 hosts

Class C

2,097,152 networks, 254 hosts 

Total

3,720,314,268 total potential Host IDs

So initially there were just shy of 4 billion potential host IDs on the network. At the time in the 70's this was considered to be enough. That proved not to be the case though which is what IPV6 (to be covered at another time) is all about.

More info:

• Networking 101 - IP Address, Router, Default Gateway

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Tags

• network 2
• code 21