NETWORK ADDRESS

Network Address
- Also known as IP Address
IP Address Classes
With an IPv4 IP address, there are five classes of available IP
ranges: Class A, Class B, Class C, Class D and Class E, while only
A, B, and C are commonly used. Each class allows for a range of
valid IP addresses, shown in the following table.
 Class Address Range Supports
Clas 1.0.0.1 to Supports 16 million hosts on each of 127
sA 126.255.255.254 networks.

Clas 128.1.0.1 to Supports 65,000 hosts on each of 16,000

sB 191.255.255.254 networks.

Clas 192.0.1.1 to Supports 254 hosts on each of 2 million

sC 223.255.254.254 networks.

Clas 224.0.0.0 to Reserved for multicast groups.

sD 239.255.255.255

Clas 240.0.0.0 to Reserved for future use, or Research and

sE 254.255.255.254 Development Purposes.

Ranges 127.x.x.x are reserved for the loopback or localhost, for

example, 127.0.0.1is the loopback address. Range 255.255.255.255 broadcasts to
all hosts on the local network.
IP Address Breakdown
Every IP address is broken down into four sets of octets, and
translated into binary to represent the actual IP address. The
below table is an example of the IP 255.255.255.255. If you are
new to binary, we highly recommend reading our binary and
hexadecimal conversions section to get a better understanding
of what we're doing in the below charts.
IP: 255 255 255 255

Binary 11111111 11111111 11111111 11111111

value:

Octet value: 8 8 8 8
As an example, let's break down the IP "166.70.10.23" in the
following table. The first row contains the separate sections of the
IP address, the second has binary values, and the third row shows
how the binary value equals the section of the IP address.

IP: 166 70 10 23

Binary 10100110 01000110 00001010 00010111

value:

Numerical 128+32+4+2 64+4+2=70 8+2=10 16+4+2+1=2

value: =166 3
IPv4 vs. IPv6
• As the Internet and technology evolve, there has been an
increasing demand for IP addresses. IPv4, which stands for
Internet Protocol version 4, can only support about 4.3 billion
devices. In the age of PCs, laptops, smartphones, tablets, and
home Internet devices, the number has been surpassed.
Essentially, we've run out of Internet addresses for devices
that connect to the Web.
• To help meet the demand for IP addresses, a new technology
was developed that is longer and uses both characters and
numbers to create an address. This new technology,
called IPv6, can support about 3.4*104 devices. To see
examples of both IPv4 and IPv6, look at the image above.