Network Addressing

The network address (which can also be called the network number) uniquely identifies each network. Every machine on the same network shares that network address as part of its IP address. In the IP address 172.16.30.56, for example, 172.16 is the network address.
             The node address is assigned to, and uniquely identifies, each machine on a network. This part of the address must be unique because it identifies a particular machine—an individual— as opposed to a network, which is a group. This number can also be referred to as a host address. In the sample IP address 172.16.30.56, the 30.56 is the node address.
            The designers of the Internet decided to create classes of networks based on network size. For the small number of networks possessing a very large number of nodes, they created the rank Class A network. At the other extreme is the Class C network, which is reserved for the numerous networks with a small number of nodes. The class distinction for networks between very large and very small is predictably called the Class B network.
           Subdividing an IP address into a network and node address is determined by the class designation of one’s network.

Summary of the three classes of networks

  To ensure efficient routing, Internet designers defined a mandate for the leading-bits section of the address for each different network class. For example, since a router knows that a Class A network address always starts with a 0, the router might be able to speed a packet on its way after reading only the first bit of its address. This is where the address schemes define the difference between a Class A, a Class B, and a Class C address. In the next sections, I’ll discuss the differences between these three classes, followed by a discussion of the Class D and Class E addresses (Classes A, B, and C are the only ranges that are used to address hosts in our networks).

Network Address Range: Class A

The designers of the IP address scheme said that the first bit of the first byte in a Class A network address must always be off, or 0. This means a Class A address must be between 0 and 127 in the first byte, inclusive.

  Consider the following network address:

0xxxxxxx

If we turn the other 7 bits all off and then turn them all on, we’ll find the Class A range of network addresses:

00000000 = 0 

01111111 = 127

  So, a Class A network is defined in the first octet between 0 and 127, and it can’t be less or more. (Yes, I know 0 and 127 are not valid in a Class A network. 

Network Address Range: Class B

In a Class B network, the RFCs state that the first bit of the first byte must always be turned on but the second bit must always be turned off. If you turn the other 6 bits all off and then all on, you will find the range for a Class B network: 

10000000 = 128 

10111111 = 191 

As you can see, a Class B network is defined when the first byte is configured from 128 to 191.

Network Address Range: Class C

For Class C networks, the RFCs define the first 2 bits of the first octet as always turned on, but the third bit can never be on. Following the same process as the previous classes, convert from binary to decimal to find the range. Here’s the range for a Class C network: 

11000000 = 192 

11011111 = 223 

   So, if you see an IP address that starts at 192 and goes to 223, you’ll know it is a Class C IP address.

Network Address Ranges: Classes D and E

The addresses between 224 to 255 are reserved for Class D and E networks. Class D (224–239) is used for multicast addresses and Class E (240–255) for scientific purposes.

Network Addresses: Special Purpose 

Some IP addresses are reserved for special purposes, so network administrators can’t ever assign these addresses to nodes.

Reserved IP Addresses

Class A Addresses

In a Class A network address, the first byte is assigned to the network address and the three remaining bytes are used for the node addresses. The Class A format is as follows: 

network.node.node.node 

For example, in the IP address 49.22.102.70, the 49 is the network address and 22.102.70 is the node address. Every machine on this particular network would have the distinctive network address of 49.

Class A network addresses are 1 byte long, with the first bit of that byte reserved and the 7 remaining bits available for manipulation (addressing). As a result, the maximum number of Class A networks that can be created is 128. Why? Because each of the 7 bit positions can be either a 0 or a 1, thus 2⁷, or 128. 

    To complicate matters further, the network address of all 0s (0000 0000) is reserved to designate the default route . Additionally, the address 127, which is reserved for diagnostics, can’t be used either, which means that you can really only use the numbers 1 to 126 to designate Class A network addresses. This means the actual number of usable Class A network addresses is 128 minus 2, or 126.

Note:-The IP address 127.0.0.1 is used to test the IP stack on an individual node and cannot be used as a valid host address.

Each Class A address has 3 bytes (24-bit positions) for the node address of a machine. This means there are 2²⁴ —or 16,777,216—unique combinations and, therefore, precisely that many possible unique node addresses for each Class A network. Because node addresses with the two patterns of all 0s and all 1s are reserved, the actual maximum usable number of nodes for a Class A network is 2²⁴ minus 2, which equals 16,777,214. Either way, that’s a huge amount of hosts on a network segment!

Class A Valid Host IDs

Here’s an example of how to figure out the valid host IDs in a Class A network address:

• All host bits off is the network address: 10.0.0.0. 
•  All host bits on is the broadcast address: 10.255.255.255.

      The valid hosts are the numbers in between the network address and the broadcast address: 10.0.0.1 through 10.255.255.254. Notice that 0s and 255s can be valid host IDs. All you need to remember when trying to find valid host addresses is that the host bits can’t all be turned off or all be on at the same time.

Class B Addresses

In a Class B network address, the first 2 bytes are assigned to the network address and the remaining 2 bytes are used for node addresses. The format is as follows: 

network.network.node.node

 For example, in the IP address 172.16.30.56, the network address is 172.16 and the node address is 30.56. 

With a network address being 2 bytes (8 bits each), there would be 2¹⁶ unique combinations. But the Internet designers decided that all Class B network addresses should start with the binary digit 1, then 0. This leaves 14 bit positions to manipulate, therefore 16,384 (that is, 2¹⁴) unique Class B network addresses. 

    A Class B address uses 2 bytes for node addresses. This is 2¹⁶ minus the two reserved patterns (all 0s and all 1s), for a total of 65,534 possible node addresses for each Class B network.

Class B Valid Host IDs

Here’s an example of how to find the valid hosts in a Class B network:

•  All host bits turned off is the network address: 172.16.0.0. 
•  All host bits turned on is the broadcast address: 172.16.255.255. 

    The valid hosts would be the numbers in between the network address and the broadcast address: 172.16.0.1 through 172.16.255.254.

Class C Addresses

The first 3 bytes of a Class C network address are dedicated to the network portion of the address, with only 1 measly byte remaining for the node address. Here’s the format:

network.network.network.node

   

Using the example IP address 192.168.100.102, the network address is 192.168.100 and the node address is 102.

   In a Class C network address, the first three bit positions are always the binary 110. The calculation is as follows: 3 bytes, or 24 bits, minus 3 reserved positions leaves 21 positions. Hence, there are 2²¹, or 2,097,152, possible Class C networks.

     Each unique Class C network has 1 byte to use for node addresses. This leads to 2⁸ or 256, minus the two reserved patterns of all 0s and all 1s, for a total of 254 node addresses for each Class C network.

Class C Valid Host IDs

Here’s an example of how to find a valid host ID in a Class C network:

• All host bits turned off is the network ID: 192.168.100.0. 
•  All host bits turned on is the broadcast address: 192.168.100.255.

The valid hosts would be the numbers in between the network address and the broadcast address: 192.168.100.1 through 192.168.100.254.

Private IP Addresses

The people who created the IP addressing scheme also created what we call private IP addresses. These addresses can be used on a private network, but they’re not routable through the Internet. This is designed for the purpose of creating a measure of well-needed security, but it also conveniently saves valuable IP address space.

 If every host on every network had to have real routable IP addresses, we would have run out of IP addresses to hand out years ago. But by using private IP addresses, ISPs, corporations, and home users only need a relatively tiny group of bona fide IP addresses to connect their networks to the Internet. This is economical because they can use private IP addresses on their inside networks and get along just fine.

  To accomplish this task, the ISP and the corporation—the end user, no matter who they are—need to use something called Network Address Translation (NAT), which basically takes a private IP address and converts it for use on the Internet.“Network Address Translation.”Many people can use the same real IP address to transmit out onto the Internet.

Reserved IP Address Space

Broadcast Addresses

Most people use the term broadcast as a generic term, and most of the time, we understand what they mean. But not always. For example, you might say, “The host broadcasted through a router to a DHCP server,” but, well, it’s pretty unlikely that this would ever really happen. What you probably mean—using the correct technical jargon—is, “The host broadcasted for an IP address; a router then forwarded this as a unicast packet to the DHCP server.” Oh, and remember that with IPv4, broadcasts are pretty important, but with IPv6, there aren’t any broadcasts sent at all.

Layer 2 broadcasts  These are sent to all nodes on a LAN.

Broadcasts (layer 3) These are sent to all nodes on the network.

Unicast                      These are sent to a single destination host.

Multicast                   These are packets sent from a single source and transmitted to many devices on different networks.

First, understand that layer 2 broadcasts are also known as hardware broadcasts—they only go out on a LAN, and they don’t go past the LAN boundary (router). The typical hardware address is 6 bytes (48 bits) and looks something like 0c.43.a4.f3.12.c2. The broadcast would be all 1s in binary, which would be all Fs in hexadecimal, as in FF.FF.FF.FF.FF.FF. 

       Then there’s the plain old broadcast addresses at layer 3. Broadcast messages are meant to reach all hosts on a broadcast domain. These are the network broadcasts that have all host bits on. Here’s an example that you’re already familiar with: The network address of 172.16.0.0 255.255.0.0 would have a broadcast address of 172.16.255.255—all host bits on. Broadcasts can also be “all networks and all hosts,” as indicated by 255.255.255.255. A good example of a broadcast message is an Address Resolution Protocol (ARP) request. When a host has a packet, it knows the logical address (IP) of the destination. To get the packet to the destination, the host needs to forward the packet to a default gateway if the destination resides on a different IP network. If the destination is on the local network, the source will forward the packet directly to the destination. Because the source doesn’t have the MAC address to which it needs to forward the frame, it sends out a broadcast, something that every device in the local broadcast domain will listen to. This broadcast says, in essence, “If you are the owner of IP address 192.168.2.3, please forward your MAC address to me,” with the source giving the appropriate information. 

     A unicast is different because it’s a broadcast packet that goes from 255.255.255.255 to an actual destination IP address—in other words, it’s directed to a specific host. A DHCP client request is a good example of how a unicast works. Here’s an example: Your host on a LAN sends out an FF.FF.FF.FF.FF.FF layer 2 broadcast and 255.255.255.255 layer 3 destination broadcast looking for a DHCP server on the LAN. The router will see that this is a broadcast meant for the DHCP server because it has a destination port number of 67 (BootP server) and will forward the request to the IP address of the DHCP server on another LAN. So, basically, if your DHCP server IP address is 172.16.10.1, your host just sends out a 255.255.255.255 DHCP client broadcast request, and the router changes that broadcast to the specific destination address of 172.16.10.1. (In order for the router to provide this service, you need to configure the interfaces with the ip helper-address command—this is not a default service.)

       Multicast is a different beast entirely. At first glance, it appears to be a hybrid of unicast and broadcast communication, but that isn’t quite the case. Multicast does allow point-tomultipoint communication, which is similar to broadcasts, but it happens in a different manner. The crux of multicast is that it enables multiple recipients to receive messages without flooding the messages to all hosts on a broadcast domain. Multicast works by sending messages or data to IP multicast group addresses. Routers then forward copies (unlike broadcasts, which are not forwarded) of the packet out every interface that has hosts subscribed to that group address. This is where multicast differs from broadcast messages—with multicast communication, copies of packets, in theory, are sent only to subscribed hosts. When I say in theory, this means that the hosts will receive, for example, a multicast packet destined for 224.0.0.9 (this is an EIGRP packet and only a router running the EIGRP protocol will read these). All hosts on the broadcast LAN (Ethernet is a broadcast multi-access LAN technology) will pick up the frame, read the destination address, and immediately discard the frame, unless they are in the multicast group. This saves PC processing, not LAN bandwidth. Multicasting can cause severe LAN congestion, in some instances, if not implemented carefully. 

     There are several different groups that users or applications can subscribe to. The range of multicast addresses starts with 224.0.0.0 and goes through 239.255.255.255. As you can see, this range of addresses falls within IP Class D address space based on classful IP assignment.