Whether or not it has anything to say, the world wants to be connected. Royal Messengers, Pony Express riders, door-to-door mailmen, radio, and television all had their glory days, and now it’s the internet’s turn. At a very rapid rate, the internet’s population is increasing, and our available address base is shrinking. Every device connected to the internet needs an address, currently an IP address: a 32 bit logical address broken up into octets, for example:127.0.0.1This number is a representation of the binary address that the internet device will actually use:127 = 01111111 0 = 00000000 0 = 00000000 1 = 00000001or 01111111000000000000000000000001(Graham)It isn’t difficult to see why the octet quartering is necessary for human comprehension. These addresses are split into classes, which gives structure to the way they (the IP address ranges) are dispersed. Class A addresses are the largest group, providing for 16.7 million (224) contiguous addresses, identified by a first bit of “1”. The next largest class is Class B, allowing for 65.5 thousand (216) contiguous addresses, identified by the first two bits, “10”. The last (common) network is Class C, allowing for 256 (28) contiguous addresses, and is identified by the first three bits “110”. Class AClass BClass CClass DAddresses Avail.16,777,21665,563256VariableNetworks Avail.12816,3842,097,152268,435,456Bit Identifier0xxxxxxx10xxxxxx110xxxxx1110xxxx These IP addresses are 32 bits in length, and the bits are divided up as follows: Version:Currently, this can be assumed to be 4, but this will be changed by the IP6 migration. Other values are in this chart:DecimalDenotationVersion0Reserved1-3Unassigned4IPInternet Protocol5STST Datagram6IP6Internet Protocol version 6 [formerly SIP]7TP/IXTransport Protocol/Internet “Next”8PIPThe “P” Internet Protocol9TUBA“TCP and UDP over Bigger ...
