Manipulating Internet Addresses

IP Addresses

• Structure of an IP address
• Classful IP addresses
• Limitations and problems with classful IP addresses
• Subnetting
• CIDR
• IP Version 6 addresses
IP Addresses

32 bits
version header Type of Service/TOS Total Length (in bytes)
(4 bits) length (8 bits) (16 bits)
flags
Identification (16 bits) Fragment Offset (13 bits)
(3 bits)
TTL Time-to-Live Protocol
Header Checksum (16 bits)
(8 bits) (8 bits)

Source IP address (32 bits)

Destination IP address (32 bits)

Ethernet Header IP Header TCP Header Application data Ethernet Trailer

Ethernet frame
IP Addresses

32 bits
0x4 0x5 0x00 4410

9d08 0102 00000000000002

12810 0x06 8bff

128.143.137.144

128.143.71.21

Ethernet Header IP Header TCP Header Application data Ethernet Trailer

Ethernet frame
What is an IP Address?

• An IP address is a unique global address for a network

interface

• An IP address:
- is a 32 bit long identifier
- encodes a network number (network prefix)
and a host number
Network prefix and host number

• The network prefix identifies a network and the host number

identifies a specific host (actually, interface on the network).

network prefix host number

• How do we know how long the network prefix is?

– Before 1993: The network prefix is implicitly defined
(class-based addressing)
or
– After 1993: The network prefix is indicated by a netmask.
Dotted Decimal Notation

• IP addresses are written in a so-called dotted decimal

notation: 4 Octets
• Each byte is identified by a decimal number in the range
[0..255]:

• Example:
10000000 10001111 10001001 10010000
1st Byte 2nd Byte 3rd Byte 4th Byte
= 128 = 143 = 137 = 144

128.143.137.144
Example

• Example: ellington.cs.virginia.edu

128.143 137.144

• Network address is: 128.143.0.0 (or 128.143)

• Host number is: 137.144
• Netmask is: 255.255.0.0 (or ffff0000)

• Prefix or CIDR notation: 128.143.137.144/16

» Network prefix is 16 bits long
Classful IP Adresses (Until 1993)

• When Internet addresses were standardized (early 1980s),

the Internet address space was divided up into classes:
– Class A: Network prefix is 8 bits long
– Class B: Network prefix is 16 bits long
– Class C: Network prefix is 24 bits long

• Each IP address contained a key which identifies the class:

– Class A: IP address starts with “0”
– Class B: IP address starts with “10”
– Class C: IP address starts with “110”
The old way: Internet Address Classes

bit # 0 1 7 8 31

Class A 0
Network Prefix Host Number
8 bits 24 bits

bit # 0 1 2 15 16 31

Class B 10 network id host

Network Prefix Host Number

16 bits 16 bits

bit # 0 1 2 3 23 24 31

Class C 110 network id host

Network Prefix Host Number

24 bits 8 bits
Problems with Classful IP Addresses

• By the early 1990s, the original classful address scheme had

a number of problems
– Flat address space. Routing tables on the backbone Internet
need to have an entry for each network address. When Class C
networks were widely used, this created a problem. By the 1993, the
size of the routing tables started to outgrow the capacity of routers.

Other problems:
– Too few network addresses for large networks
• Class A and Class B addresses were gone
– Limited flexibility for network addresses:
• Class A and B addresses are overkill (>64,000 addresses)
• Class C address is insufficient (requires 40 Class C addresses)
CIDR - Classless Interdomain Routing

• IP backbone routers have one routing table entry for each

network address:
– With subnetting, a backbone router only needs to know one entry for
each Class A, B, or C networks
– This is acceptable for Class A and Class B networks
• 27 = 128 Class A networks
• 214 = 16,384 Class B networks
– But this is not acceptable for Class C networks
• 221 = 2,097,152 Class C networks
• In 1993, the size of the routing tables started to outgrow the
capacity of routers
• Consequence: The Class-based assignment of IP addresses
had to be abandoned
CIDR - Classless Interdomain Routing

• Goals:
– New interpretation of the IP address space
– Restructure IP address assignments to increase efficiency
– Permits route aggregation to minimize route table entries

• CIDR (Classless Interdomain routing)

– abandons the notion of classes
– Key Concept: The length of the network prefix in the IP
addresses is kept arbitrary
– Consequence: Size of the network prefix must be provided
with an IP address
CIDR Notation

• CIDR notation of an IP address:

192.0.2.0/18
• "18" is the prefix length. It states that the first 18 bits are the network
prefix of the address (and 14 bits are available for specific host
addresses)

• CIDR notation can replace the use of subnetmasks (but is more general)
– IP address 128.143.137.144 and subnetmask 255.255.255.0 becomes
128.143.137.144/24

• CIDR notation allows to drop traling zeros of network addresses:

192.0.2.0/18 can be written as 192.0.2/18
Subnetting

• Problem: Organizations
have multiple networks
University Network
which are independently
managed Engineering Medical
– Solution 1: Allocate a School School
separate network address for
each network
• Difficult to manage Library
• From the outside of the
organization, each network
must be addressable.
– Solution 2: Add another
level of hierarchy to the
Subnetting
IP addressing structure
Basic Idea of Subnetting
• Split the host number portion of an IP address into a
subnet number and a (smaller) host number.
• Result is a 3-layer hierarchy

network prefix host number

network prefix subnet number host number

extended network prefix

• Then:
• Subnets can be freely assigned within the organization
• Internally, subnets are treated as separate networks
• Subnet structure is not visible outside the organization
Subnetmask

• Routers and hosts use an extended network prefix

(subnetmask) to identify the start of the host numbers

128.143 137.144

network prefix host number

128.143 137 144

network prefix subnet host number

number
extended network prefix

1111111111111111 1111111100000000

subnetmask
Advantages of Subnetting

• With subnetting, IP addresses use a 3-layer hierarchy:

» Network
» Subnet
» Host

• Reduces router complexity. Since external routers do not

know about subnetting, the complexity of routing tables at
external routers is reduced.

• Note: Length of the subnet mask need not be identical at all

subnetworks.
IPv6 - IP Version 6

• IP Version 6
– Is the successor to the currently used IPv4
– Specification completed in 1994
– Makes improvements to IPv4 (no revolutionary changes)

• One (not the only !) feature of IPv6 is a significant increase in

of the IP address to 128 bits (16 bytes)
• IPv6 will solve – for the foreseeable future – the
problems with IP addressing
• 1024 addresses per square inch on the surface of the
Earth.
IPv6 vs. IPv4: Address Comparison

• IPv4 has a maximum of

232  4 billion addresses
• IPv6 has a maximum of
2128 = (232)4  4 billion x 4 billion x 4 billion x 4 billion
addresses
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