In each of the three usable classes of IP addressing, there is a range set aside to use as private addresses.

These ranges are discussed in the section called, Private and Link-Local Addresses on page 163 and again in the section called, Special Addresses on pages 402-403. The ranges as shown in the textbook are:

Class A B C

IPv4 Addresses 10.0.0.0 through 10.255.255.255 172.16.0.0 through 172.31.255.255 192.168.0.0 through 192.168.255.255

These addresses are not routable, meaning that they can only communicate with devices in the same network. To use a private addressing scheme on a network that requires internet access, you must have a device that will perform NAT and at least one public IP address. However, when you use a private address, you cannot simply take one address from the range of addresses and apply it to your computer or other networking device. It must be in a network. Therefore, when we talk about private addressing, we refer to the

NETWORKS
not the entire host ranges. So, for Class A, we say that the entire 10.0.0.0 network is used for private addressing - not 10.0.0.0 thru 10.255.255.255 (which would be inaccurate as well because 10.255.255.255 would be a broadcast address and would never be available for host assignment). Here is how the private addressing should be represented: Class A - 10.0.0.0 Class B - 172.16.0.0 to 172.31.0.0 Class C - 192.168.0.0 to 192.168.255.0 All of these represent NETWORKS that are available to use. If you needed less than 254 addresses, you could choose to use one of the Class C private networks and use any address from 0 to 255 for the third octet, such as 192.168.25.0 / 24. If you needed more than 254 addresses, or would like some room to be able to create different subnets within one address space, you could choose to use a Class B private network like 172.20.0.0 / 16 and then subnet it into several different networks.