TCP/IP Illustrated Episode 8

The Internet Address Architecture

Introduction

This chapter deals with the structure of network-layer addresses used in the Internet, also known as IP addresses. We discuss how addresses are allocated and assigned to devices on the Internet, the way hierarchy in address assignment aids routing scalability, and the use of special-purpose addresses, including broadcast, multicast, and anycast addresses. We also discuss how the structure and use of IPv4 and IPv6 addresses differ.

Every device connected to the Internet has at least one IP address. Devices used in private networks based on the TCP/IP protocols also require IP addresses.

Expressing IP Addresses

The vast majority of Internet users who are familiar with IP addresses understand the most popular type: IPv4 addresses. Such addresses are often represented in so-called dotted-quad or dotted-decimal notation, for example, 165.195.130.107.

In IPv6, addresses are 128 bits in length, four times larger than IPv4 addresses, and generally speaking are less familiar to most users. The conventional notation adopted for IPv6 addresses is a series of four hexadecimal (“hex,” or base-16) numbers called blocks or fields separated by colons. An example IPv6 address containing eight blocks would be written as 5f05:2000:80ad:5800:0058:0800:2023:1d71.

In addition, a number of agreed-upon simplifications have been standardized for expressing IPv6 addresses [RFC4291]:

1.Leading zeros of a block need not be written. In the preceding example, the address could have been written as 5f05:2000:80ad:5800:58:800:2023:1d71.
2.Blocks of all zeros can be omitted and replaced by the notation ::. For example, the IPv6 address 0:0:0:0:0:0:0:1 can be written more compactly as ::1. Similarly, the address 2001:0db8:0:0:0:0:0:2 can be written more compactly as 2001:db8::2. To avoid ambiguities, the :: notation may be used only once in an IPv6 address.
3.Embedded IPv4 addresses represented in the IPv6 format can use a form of hybrid notation in which the block immediately preceding the IPv4 portion of the address has the value ffff and the remaining part of the address is formatted using dotted-quad. For example, the IPv6 address ::ffff:10.0.0.1 represents the IPv4 address 10.0.0.1. This is called an IPv4-mapped IPv6 address.
4.A conventional notation is adopted in which the low-order 32 bits of the IPv6 address can be written using dotted-quad notation. The IPv6 address ::0102:f001 is therefore equivalent to the address ::1.2.240.1. This is called an IPv4-compatible IPv6 address. Note that IPv4-compatible addresses are not the same as IPv4-mapped addresses; they are compatible only in the sense that they can be written down or manipulated by software in a way similar to IPv4 addresses. This type of addressing was originally required for transition plans between IPv4 and IPv6 but is now no longer required
[RFC4291].

Basic IP Address Structure

IPv4 has 4,294,967,296 possible addresses in its address space, and IPv6 has 340,282,366,920,938,463,463,374,607,431,768,211,456. Because of the large number of addresses (especially for IPv6), it is convenient to divide the address space into chunks. IP addresses are grouped by type and size. Most of the IPv4 address chunks are eventually subdivided down to a single address and used to identify a single network interface of a computer attached to the Internet or to some private intranet. These addresses are called unicast addresses. Most of the IPv4 address space is unicast address space. Most of the IPv6 address space is not currently being used.

Classful Addressing

When the Internet’s address structure was originally defined, every unicast IP address had a network portion, to identify the network on which the interface using the IP address was to be found, and a host portion, used to identify the particular host on the network given in the network portion. Thus, some number of contiguous bits in the address became known as the net number, and remaining bits were known as the host number. At the time, most hosts had only a single network interface, so the terms interface address and host address were used somewhat interchangeably.