IP Address
1
The Internet needs addresses
• Addresses allow endpoints to identify, and hence talk to each other
• E.g., like people have names
• Addresses allow routers to determine how to move a packet
• E.g., like the postal system
• Network layer addresses are designed to help routers perform the
forwarding and routing functions efficiently
• Specifically, we’ll look at Internet Protocol (IP) addresses.
• Most popular: IP version 4 or IPv4. (Coming up later: IPv6)
IPv4 Addresses
• 32 bits long
• Identifier for a network interface
• An IP address corresponds to the point of attachment of an
endpoint to the network.
• An IP address is NOT an identifier for the endpoint
• Dotted quad notation: each byte is written in decimal in MSB
order, separated by dots. Example:
10000000 11000011 00000001 01010000
128 . 95 . 1 . 80
Grouping IP addresses by prefixes
• IP addresses can be grouped based on a shared prefix of a
specified length
• Example: consider two IP addresses:
• 128.95.1.80 and 128.95.1.4
• The addresses share a prefix of (bit) length 24: 128.95.1
• The addresses have different suffixes of (bit) length 8
• IP addresses: prefix corresponds to the network component and
the suffix to an endpoint/host component of the address
IP addresses use hierarchy to scale routing
NJ
• IP addresses of endpoint interfaces in a network
(e.g., Rutgers Busch campus) share a prefix of
some length
• Each interface/endpoint has a different suffix, and
hence a different 32-bit IP address
• Using prefixes reduces the amount of information
needed to forward packets over the Internet
• IP prefixes are like zip codes: routers don’t need to
store info for each endpoint, just each prefix
• Prefixes also allow IP addresses to be delegated
from one network to another (more on this later)
IP addresses use hierarchy to scale routing
NJ
• Postal envelopes should show clearly
delineated zip codes.
• Q: How to identify the prefix from a 32-bit IP
address?
• Two methods:
• Old: Classful addressing
• New: Classless addressing (also called classless
inter-domain routing, or CIDR)
Classful IPv4 addressing
Classful IPv4 addressing
Class 32 bits
A 0 Net Host 0.x.x.x – 127.x.x.x
Unicast: single endpoint dest
B 10 Net Host 128.x.x.x – 191.x.x.x
Unicast: single endpoint dest
C 110 Net Host 192.x.x.x – 223.x.x.x
Unicast: single endpoint dest
D 1110 Multicast address 224.x.x.x – 239.x.x.x
Destination is a group of hosts
E 1111 Reserved 240.x.x.x – 255.x.x.x
8 bit 16 bit 24 bit First octet of IP address gives
prefix prefix prefix you the prefix length.
Classful IPv4 addressing
• Class A:
• For very large organizations
• 224 = 16 million hosts allowed
• Class B:
• For large organizations
• 216 = 65 thousand hosts allowed
• Class C
• For small organizations
• 28 = 255 hosts allowed
• Class D
• Multicast addresses
• No network/host hierarchy
Problems with classful addressing
• IP prefixes are allocated to organizations (e.g., Rutgers) by
Internet Registry organizations (e.g., ARIN, in North America)
• Many organizations required something bigger than class C
address, but smaller than a class A (or even B) address
• However, the Internet was running out of class B addresses
• Too many networks required multiple class C addresses
• Not enough nets in class A for large + medium organizations
• Key issue: Classful addressing is too coarse-grained: The
addressing strategy must allow for greater diversity of network
sizes
Classless IPv4 addressing
(CIDR)
Classless IPv4 addressing
• Also called classless inter-domain routing (CIDR)
• Key idea: Network component of the address (ie: prefix) can
have any length (usually from 8—32)
• Address format: a.b.c.d/x, where x is the prefix length
• Customary to use 0s for all suffix bits
network host
part part
11001000 00010111 00010000 00000000
200.23.16.0/23
CIDR
• An ISP can obtain a block of addresses 200.8.0.0/16
and partition this further to its customers
• Say an ISP has 200.8.0.0/16 address
(65K addresses).
200.8.0.0
• The ISP has customer who needs only
200.8.0.1
64 addresses starting from 200.8.4.128 200.8.4.128/26
…
• Then that block can be specified as 200.8.1.0
200.8.4.128/26 200.8.1.1
…
• 200.8.4.128/26 is “inside” 200.8.0.0/16
200.8.255.255
Netmask (or subnet mask)
• An alternative to denote the IP prefix length of an organization
• 32 bits: a 1-bit denotes a prefix bit position. 0 is the host part.
network host
part part
11001000 00010111 00010000 00000000
200.23.16.0/23
network part Host part
of mask of mask
11111111 11111111 11111110 00000000
Netmask: 255.255.254.0
